Hiding from Baba Yaga

„Vasilisa was running faster than she had ever run before. Soon she could hear the witch, Baba Yaga’s mortar bumping on the ground behind her. Desperately, she remembered the thin black cat’s words and threw the towel behind her on the ground. The towel grew bigger and bigger, and soon a deep, broad river stood between the little girl and Baba Yaga. And Baba Yaga the witch, the bony-legged one, gnashing her teeth and screaming with rage and disappointment, finally turned round and drove away back to her little hut on hen’s legs.“

From time immemorial people have sought protection and freedom on the banks of the Yenisei and the adjacent wild taiga. For a long time, the banks of the Yenisei have been pervaded by nomadic peoples.

The Russians, coming from the west, chased by the greed for valuable fur, did not reach the river until 1607. Criminals, escaped serfs, apostates or simply adventurers, joined together in wild rider associations and expanded ever deeper into the vast wild Taiga. The life of the settlers in Siberia was free and self-determined for the time. Old believers settled on lonely banks of the Yenisei to escape the persecution of the Tsar and later the Soviets.

With Stalin the Yenisei became a place of exile and forced labor. The Soviets not only chained the native peoples, but also the Yenisei. With two giant dams they created lakes of almost 400km length. Villages sank in the water, the climate changed. A dense fog swept over the river.

The USSR is history. Today, most people are drawn to big cities like Moscow or St Petersburg. Therefore the Yenisei turns more and more into a space for dreamers and loners to escape the worldly world.

Encountering all this different people, there is a bond which connects them with each other. The seek of freedom, protection, imprisonment and isolation. The Yenisei and its woods become a metaphor of a dreamscape: Loneliness, unfulfilled dreams, death, abandoned hopes shape people as much as the vast nature, which at the same time gives so much freedom and places of retreat.

Having learnt from my recent travel I want to take on this journey and photograph along the northern part of the river. More than half of the year, the Yenisei is frozen. Only in the summer months a mail ship connects the individual settlements from Krasnoyarsk to northern city Dudinka, next to the arctic ocean. In winter the only way of transportation is a snow mobile or a helicopter. Far from civilization people live completely on their own. Forcibly resettled under Stalin, most of the people have returned to more pleasant climate zones today. What kind of people still withstand the difficult living conditions in the far north?

Hunters and people longing for loneliness and wilderness?

I wish to go back during the coldest months and explore the northern region and connect with its people and explore their lives.

© Nanna Heitmann - Image from the Hiding from Baba Yaga photography project
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The Sajano-Shushensk Reservoir, with its hydroelectric power station, is Russia's largest hydroelectric plant. The reservoir changed the climate in the region. It was getting wetter and rainier.

© Nanna Heitmann - Image from the Hiding from Baba Yaga photography project
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It's summer holidays. Valentin injured his head when he made a dive while bathing. In summer brakes are a nuisance, they are everywhere.

© Nanna Heitmann - Image from the Hiding from Baba Yaga photography project
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An old model airplane. One of the countless treasures Yuri find on the garbage damp on which he lives. Sometimes relatives come to visit and pick up toys for their children.

© Nanna Heitmann - Image from the Hiding from Baba Yaga photography project
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Driving through the Sayan Mountains, the road passes 500km through forest. No settlement as far as the eye can see. Only construction workers and dust covering the forests. An attempt to repair the roads before the frost bites through the concrete again.

© Nanna Heitmann - Image from the Hiding from Baba Yaga photography project
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The girl Vaselisa in the village of the Old Believers. Her parents are both deaf and dumb and the only unbelievers in a village that lives strictly to century-old rituals. Her only friend lives in the village of Sissim. The summer holidays over the Yenisei and a walk separates them from each other. "Once we're together again, we'll be holding hands all the time.“

© Nanna Heitmann - Image from the Hiding from Baba Yaga photography project
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Yuri built his little hut on a dump so he can feed his 15 dogs with what he finds in the dump. Everything he owns he found on the rubbish dump. Inside it is dark. He has covered the small windows so that the hut does not heat up too much in the short but hot summer.

© Nanna Heitmann - Image from the Hiding from Baba Yaga photography project
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Yuri in front of his self-built home. "I am a simple worker. Nothing keeps me more in the city. All my friends are in the cemetery. Drugs or alcohol. Here the air is clear and not dirty from all the coal dust in the air. „

© Nanna Heitmann - Image from the Hiding from Baba Yaga photography project
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Biologist Nikolai Putinzov has the largest collection of insects and amphibians in the Tuva area. The biodiversity and water quality are under serious threat from Chinese companies mining gold in large quantities, managing the mercury in the Yenisei and clearing the forests and exporting them to China on a large scale.

© Nanna Heitmann - Image from the Hiding from Baba Yaga photography project
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A large number of fires spread this summer in Siberia. A dry and warm winter caused many fires. At the same time, wildfires are commonplace in the densely wooded area. Here the forest is burning not far from the city of Minusinsk.

© Nanna Heitmann - Image from the Hiding from Baba Yaga photography project
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Valentin describes himself as an anarchist ecologist. He is a retired officer .. Today he lives on his small property in the forest. Even at minus 50 degrees, he sleeps by the fire, outside or in his small tent. At daytime he patrolls through forests, extinguishing forest fires or protecting ant hills. "Where there is a big ant hill, there are no ticks."

© Nanna Heitmann - Image from the Hiding from Baba Yaga photography project
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The guardian spirits of the shaman Kara-ool hang in his treatment room in the shamanic clinic. His grandparents hid the ancient ancestral masks in caves in front of the Soviets. Today, shamanism can be freely practiced again and many people remember their roots and seek advice and healing from shamans.

© Nanna Heitmann - Image from the Hiding from Baba Yaga photography project
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While waiting for the bus, Dolgar Dmitrievna’s daughter is sleeping on her lap in the summer heat. In the summer temperatures in the Republic of Tuva climb to 50 degrees plus. In winter it gets up to minus 50 degrees. cold

© Nanna Heitmann - Image from the Hiding from Baba Yaga photography project
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The hydropower plant Sajano-Shushenskaya GES. It is the largest of Russia and the 9th largest in the world. Here, the water power of the Yenisei is harnessed. The plant was built to power the huge aluminum factories in Krasnoyarsk. With two giant dams they created lakes of almost 400km length. Villages sank in the water, the climate changed. A dense fog swept over the river.

© Nanna Heitmann - Image from the Hiding from Baba Yaga photography project
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A traditional horse race of the Tuvinese National Festival Naadym in the steppe, at 43 degrees. The horses and their riders cover a distance of 30km. Seven horses died in the heat.

© Nanna Heitmann - Image from the Hiding from Baba Yaga photography project
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Khuresh is a type of wrestling sport and the national sport of the Tuvan Republic, a partially recognized state in southern Siberia. No national festivity is celebrated without a khuresh match. The people of Tuva even create sagas and legends about their favorite athletes, ascribing supernatural qualities to them. In this picture, two young athletes are practicing khuresh: the fighter who first touches the ground with any part of his body except for his feet or hands, loses

© Nanna Heitmann - Image from the Hiding from Baba Yaga photography project
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In the Soviet Union there was a lot of industry in Siberia. Today, the people feel forgotten by Moscow politics. In Tuva unemployment is very high, alcohol consumption and the use of synthetic drugs have become a major problem. The capital of Tuva, Kysyl, is considered the most dangerous city in Russia. The former huge flour factory is closed. Even grain is only imported.

© Nanna Heitmann - Image from the Hiding from Baba Yaga photography project
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Evgenii with his rat Barclay in his apartment in Krasnoyarsk. Next year, he will move to the US for five months to earn enough money to own a car. After watching the movie Ratatouille, he immediately bought a rat at the pet store.

© Nanna Heitmann - Image from the Hiding from Baba Yaga photography project
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Biologist Nikolai Putinzov has the largest collection of insects and amphibians in the Tuva area. The biodiversity and water quality are under serious threat from Chinese companies mining gold in large quantities, managing the mercury in the Yenisei and clearing the forests and exporting them to China on a large scale.

© Nanna Heitmann - Image from the Hiding from Baba Yaga photography project
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Ballerina Julia dances five hours a day at the Ballet Academy in Krasnoyarsk. In addition to ballet lessons, also regular school subjects are taught. Julia dreams of becoming a ballerina.

© Nanna Heitmann - Image from the Hiding from Baba Yaga photography project
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A small ferry boat is the only connection to the village of Old Believers, Erzhey. The Old Believers turned against the reforms of the Patriarch Nikon, who reformed from 1652 texts and rites of Russian Orthodox worship. Therefore, many fled to the most remote areas of Russia. First from the Tsar, later from the Soviets. Along the upper reaches of the small Yenissei, there are many small villages of the Old Believers, which still try to live self-sufficient, far away from Western influences.

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