In November 2015, photographer Andrey Shapran journeyed three and a half hours from the Russian town of Anadyr to photograph the polar bear migration through Ryrkaypiy, which sits just south-west of Cape Schmidt – the northeastern most point of Siberia.
To his disappointment, he had missed the migration, so he decided to explore and photograph Cape Schmidt – in particular the abandoned Soviet military base that is located there. What he found was a textbook visual representation of the word desolate.
Photographer Andrey Shapran’s haunting series Cape North leads you by the hand through the most desolate place in the world.
Last year, Shapran shared a haunting collection of what he shot at Cape Schmidt with Wired, describing the place as completely bleak, devoid of life or colour. “There isn’t a living soul around,” he says.
The Soviets built the base at Cape Schmidt in 1954. It was abandoned after the Cold War, and completely evacuated after a brutal winter in 1998 drove all remaining residents out of the region.
Shapran spent three weeks there, enduring piercing cold and little more than a few hours of light each day while he explored the area.
His collection, titled Cape North, captures the impossible desolation of the area – a place where the only sound is the ceaseless howl of wind, a place so devoid of colour that colour photographs appear black and white.
Check it out below or on Sharpan’s portfolio.
[via Wired]
