Tiksi - An interview with Evgenia Arbugaeva

Photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva

Since her graduation from the International Centre of Photography (ICP) in 2009, Evgenia Arbugaeva (1985, Russia) has gained worldwide recognition for her work on Tiksi, a small town in Northern Russia resting on the coast of the Arctic Ocean, where she spent the early years of her childhood. In 2012 she received the Bright Spark award in the Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward Competition for emerging photographers, and a Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund Grant.

In 2013 Arbugaeva was named one of PDN’s ‘30 Emerging Photographers to Watch’ and she won the Leica Oskar Barnack Award at the Rencontres d’Arles. She has also been selected for the 20th edition of the Joop Swart Masterclass, the annual masterclass for emerging photographers organised by World Press Photo.
Things seem to be taking off in your photography. Where did it all start for you?

When I was an exchange student in high school in Connecticut (USA), I took a class in photography.
There I learnt many things that got me into photography. Somewhat later, when I was around 19 years old, I met a female ‘Even’: a member of a nomadic indigenous tribe of Yakutia (Russia) who lives part-time in the city and part- time in a reindeer herd. Her son was wounded after a gas explosion and she didn’t have money for his surgery. 

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