Bare bones

Magnum’s Jacob Aue Sobol tours a landscape with a harrowing history.He talks to Oliver Atwell

- Oliver Arwell

The Kolyma Highway can be found in the far east of Russia. It cuts through the desolate Siberian landscape, where the severe temperatures can plummet to as low as -60°C and where, despite the seemingly inhospitable conditions, isolated communities living in towns and villages line the route and carve out an existence for themselves. It’s a landscape with a dark aura and one that is haunted by the ghosts of a gruesome past,  for the Kolyma Highway is popularly known by another name – the Road of Bones.

Between 1932 and 1953, Stalin’s regime sent millions of prisoners to forced labour camps, or Gulags, in Siberia, where they would be literally worked to death. One of the largest tasks undertaken was the construction of the 2,031km Kolyma Highway. It was a painful and fatal labour that saw the deaths of countless prisoners. Their bodies, rather than being buried in newly dug holes, were laid beneath or around the road. Today, the road is a grim memorial to the fallen.

The isolated communities that exist along the Kolyma’s route form the backbone of a new project by Magnum photographer Jacob Aue Sobol, who worked in collaboration with Leica Cameras and who last month had 28 of his images on show at Photo London 2017. Jacob and these communities are a perfect fit. His work is famous for its stark black & white tonal range, its strangeness and its haunting intimacy. Despite the harrowing history captured in the Road of Bones, Jacob’s distinct aesthetic, shot using Leica M cameras, is able to draw out the beauty of the area and reveal the strength of the people who live there to this day.