There is a feeling in photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva‘s images that is far removed from the space and time we usually know and see. Her photographs feel less like documents and more like postcards — freezing moments with a fairytale, otherworldly calm. They carry the realism of documentary photography, but are defined by landscapes and views of an untouched nature that manages to feel both peaceful and quietly unsettling.

The photographer — born in 1985 — is from Tiksi, a port town in northern Siberia. A place of extreme cold, where winter temperatures can drop to -50°C, and which she has always been committed to documenting, along with the daily lives of those who inhabit these remote corners of the planet.

Through her projects, Arbugaeva becomes an active participant in the communities she photographs: she spends extended periods of time with them, capturing everyday life naturally but with the sharp eye of a photojournalist — able to freeze moments that feel almost staged, like scenes from a theatre set.

The people are not the only protagonists in her images. Alongside them is the vast nature that surrounds them — untouched, yet marked by the presence of those who live within it.

Some works are darker and more melancholic than others, in both colour and subject. Yet what unites all of Arbugaeva’s photographs is a pervading sense of romanticism and the sublime. From a snapshot of a hand-built boat belonging to Slava, former head of the Khodovarikha weather station, to a melancholic portrait of Nikolai in his home — an abandoned meteorological station in Enurmino, on the edge of the Arctic Circle — as he holds his head in his hands, remembering the wife he lost the year before.

Russia is not the only territory Arbugaeva has explored. Her work also takes her to Tanzania, where she ventures into the Amani Nature Reserve, guided by John Mganga — a retired laboratory assistant who spent his life supporting British scientists in their malaria research at the Reserve’s research station.

In each of these visually and emotionally powerful images, Arbugaeva’s presence is total and respectful — perfectly fulfilling her mission of showing us different ways of living, and the personal yet extraordinary stories of ordinary people, held in these timeless corners of the world.

This article was produced in collaboration with Luigi Falanga and Gaia Forlin aka @super8otto.