Kolodozero (Russian: Колодозеро) by Aleksey Myakishev, made from 2011 to 2015 around a lake on the Karelia-Arkhangelsk border in northwestern Russia, follows the everyday and spiritual life of its dispersed rural settlements.
Beginning with a Christmas visit in 2011, the project developed through repeated stays across all four seasons. Father Arkady, a priest serving several settlements, became Myakishev's host and central point of entry into domestic routines, parish life, and the wider community. From this close vantage, the series examines work, family, faith, landscape, and seasonal recurrence as connected parts of rural existence. It also registers scarce employment, youth migration, aging residents, and emptying houses without advancing a declared political argument. For Myakishev, Kolodozero became a means of considering belonging and the question of human origins.
These connections emerge through fragments of unstaged life: residents beside the lake, Father Arkady and the church community, young people on motorcycles, a boy with a bicycle, women washing laundry through winter ice, and a figure carrying an evergreen across snow. The black-and-white photographs move between interiors, portraits, communal activities, and northern landscapes. Natural light shapes scenes ranging from snow and mist to sunlight entering a schoolroom, while the alternation of close encounters and open terrain creates a reflective, occasionally dreamlike atmosphere.
Myakishev used a Leica M-P rangefinder with 35 mm and 50 mm lenses, worked handheld without a tripod or flash, and photographed encounters as they unfolded rather than directing scenes. He exposed black-and-white film, developed it himself, and manually produced exhibition prints in his home darkroom.
Recognition began while the project was still developing. A Kolodozero-related series was shortlisted in the Lifestyle category of the 2013 Sony World Photography Awards, and Moscow's MAMM presented a solo exhibition that year. Bergger Éditions published Kolodozero in 2016 as its first book, followed by a solo exhibition at Moscow's Gallery of Classic Photography and presentations across France, Italy, Germany, and Russia. The project later appeared in East. Eyes. Effect. - Part 1 at Leica Gallery Vienna in 2020-21. Its photographs also entered Myakishev's broader The Russian North, which received a 2020 encouragement grant from the Friends of the Musée départemental Albert-Kahn.
