It is hard to even imagine what it is like to live in one of the most inhospitable territories on earth, covered in snow all year round, with temperatures dropping below minus 50 degrees in the coldest months. It is in these conditions that the Nenets live, in the Siberian strip of land called the Yamal peninsula, inhabited by herds of animals that cause entire villages to migrate.
The Nenets are a nomadic people devoted to their livestock, the only source of wealth and survival for entire families. Their connection with nature is spiritual and shamans play an important role in the villages, connecting humans with the darkest and most mysterious forces.

Nicola Ducati’s Shades of White series is an account of living with the Nenets for ten days, immersing oneself in their culture and trying to decipher the gestures and minimalist language that describes nature according to the feelings it arouses. There are ten different words just to describe white in all its nuances, and it is easy to think that this is normal, since white in the Yamal surrounds the entire visual horizon, with infinite meanings and textures.
In the tents, animal skins warm from the cold, while Samoyed dogs in a corner gnaw on the last bones of a fish.

One of the few signs of mechanical human intervention is the slow, silent railway that brings supplies and relief, seen by the Nenets as a means through which to exchange products. The transit of the train leaves no trace in the snow, the rails disappear and only the cloud of steam remains in the landscape.
The photographs show a minority that is preserving a primordial way of life, adapting their lifestyle, sending the youngest to university to increase their chances of surviving an unsustainable economic system that is defying even the coldest Arctic storms.