Prison entrance, Murmansk, October 1993

Having been drawn to the USSR by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's shattering trilogy The Gulag Archipelago, a grim documentary of the deadly Soviet prison camp system, it was with very mixed feelings that I visited this prison. Would we be shown the truth, or a hastily assembled improvement, prisoners warned not to tell the truth on pain of death? Likely things were already changing for the better. I certainly hoped so, as I hoped that the Orthodox church at lower right was real.

Kindergarten, Murmansk, July 1994

Although Murmansk is above the Arctic Circle, it is also a city of well over half a million, the largest city this far north in the world. 28 hours by train gets you there from St Petersburg. And because it is so far north, while its winters are sunless for 2 months, its summers have endless sunshine for the same duration. (Emerging from a banya, a Russian sauna, at 1 am one night, I saw the sun high in the sky, obviously not intending to get anywhere near the horizon.)

I broke a rule here, photographing my young subjects squinting into the sun; but I still like the shot.

Chopping meat, Murmansk, Russia, 1992

The ever-present butcher's axe... look out for bone chips as you chew.