Zone of Absolute Discomfort By Justin Jin

Moscow bureaucrats call the Arctic Circle The Zone of Absolute Discomfort, an icy desert dotted with dying fishing villages and specters of former concentration camps. Deep underneath the permafrost, however, are untold riches: a cache of oil and gas that could sustain Russia for decades.

Gas extractors burn off excess condensate.

Justin visited this region a dozen times to capture the conflicts among these populations, which span three centuries of Russian history. First the Nenets, the indigenous herders who roamed the tundra. The Soviet government decimated them, and scarred the once-pristine land. Today, new gas and oil exploration outposts rise next to the shell of old Soviet drill sites, making a renewed assault on the Nenets.

A gas worker blows steam on gas pipelines to prevent them from freezing during a cold morning when temperature dropped to -42c.
Workers connect a pipeline that connects Gazprom's gas field to a processing plant that will supply Germany and the rest of Europe.
Since the early 2000s, when scientists discovered new fields containing billions of tons of oil and gas trapped underneath the tundra, the Kremlin has directed Russian energy companies to usurp these Arctic resources. Engineers and miners from around the world work short stints in the region, looking for natural wealth deposits three kilometers below the tundra. They come with expensive, sophisticated equipment and earn substantial sums for their hardship tour.
A worker repairs a leaking pipe without gloves in -30c.
A man working on the frontier of Arctic gas and oil exploration rubs himself with snow during sauna in the Arctic tundra. The water is heated by the diesel tank on the left of the picture. Typically, these men work in the cold, isolated wilderness for the entire winter, returning to civilisation only in spring.
Natural gas from much of Russia arrives at this Gazprom station to be compressed before being sent under the Baltic Sea to Germany. It’s the last stop between Russia and Europe, and a strategic site for Moscow's gas diplomacy.
Ice-breakers carve up the sea ice 24 hours a day to protect the world's most northern oil terminal off Russia's Arctic coast. Once every 11 days a tanker passes by to fuel.

meanwhile, The Ghost of Stalin's labour camps haunts...

Inside mono-cities, where the entire populations depend on one (usually dying) heavy industry, mounted jet aircraft stand sentry over cities used and abused by the Soviet government, and descendants of Stalin’s prisons populate the streets.

Andrei, a 35, shares 70% alcohol with friends in town that has lost its only factory two decades ago.
Acid rain killed everything within five kilometer radius in this Arctic mining town.
The black rings around this coal-miner are not mascara, but coal left unwashed and tattooed into his soft tissues. Behind him stand abandoned boarding houses built for an influx of coal workers during the coal mining boom in the 1970s and 80s.
WWII fighter jet and tank monuments stand atop a mountain overseeing a city of strategic importance during the Cold War.

The complex geo-politics swirling over what seemed like empty Arctic tundra fascinated Justin so much that he traveled for months in deep snow to create this work.

The Russian military granted him unprecedented access to photograph the strategic zones, international energy companies showed him their technology, and snow-truck drivers took him hitch-hiking along energy diplomacy’s coldest battle front.

International prizes attest to this work, including the Magnum Fund and Pictures of the Year International (POYi). Visa Pour L'Image, the world's premier festival for photojournalism, presented a large exhibition of this work.

Born in Hong Kong and now based in Brussels, Justin lived in Moscow for six years and speak enough Russian to find stories in Russia’s inhospitable Arctic tundra.