54° N 84° E

My name is Nastya, and I am 24. A year and half ago I was faced with a choice: move to a remote corner of the country or beyond its borders. At that time, many of my friends were leaving Moscow, where I was born and raised. The city had lost its appeal for me. They say that Moscow is not Russia. Which means I decided to leave for Russia. And so, in September 2022, I found myself in a music classroom in a rural school in the train-stop town of Yevsino, in Novosibirsk Oblast’s Istkitim District. I ended up there thanks to a program run by the nonprofit foundation New Teacher. The foundation seeks to support and develop education in towns and villages outside Russia’s major cities, including by finding and training new teachers and dispatching them to remote schools.

For a year, I brought a film camera with me to school. The result is a photography project about Yevsino and my love for this place and its people.

As you approach Yevsino, the first thing you see are the above-ground pipes. They form a belt around the town’s perimeter, a ubiquitous string of metal tubes.