I enjoy flying eastward. The night on the way passes quickly, and after several flights over Siberia, you begin to recognize landmarks without needing a map. One of my projects in Transbaikalia combined archival work with field research, which is always fascinating. The study focused on the Cossacks of the Barguzinsky settlement in the 17th-18th centuries and a convict exiled to the Nerchinsk mines at the end of the 18th century, who was later transferred for sustenance ("na prokorm") to the Selenginsky district in the early 19th century.

Preliminary work in the Moscow Archive of Ancient Acts, and in the archives of Irkutsk, Ulan-Ude, and Chita provided a wealth of data that needed to be "tied" to the landscape. However, in the 1820s, the Irkutsk archive burned down, leaving only later documents and the records of the spiritual consistory. Despite this, it is always rewarding to work with diverse sources, cross-referencing and correlating information from various documents, collections, and archives.

This project followed the same principle. In Irkutsk, we worked with consistory documents; in Moscow, with the records of Siberian administrative offices from Irkutsk, Ilimsk, Selenginsk, and Barguzin, as well as decrees from the Siberian Office, Robbery Office, Investigative Office, and others, the Moscow Provincial Office, and Moscow Senate Departments. In Ulan-Ude, we accessed the Cossack Administration collections, while in Chita, the records of the Nerchinsk Mining Administration and many other sources proved invaluable.

Gradually, the puzzle began to come together. Field trips with Alexander Poselyanin confirmed and expanded the results of the archival searches. On some trips, I brought along a large-format film camera. I can’t quite explain why analog photography holds such a strong allure, but I am captivated by film images and prints made on silver-based photographic paper. See more