Norilsk - deadly beautiful

The most northerly town within the arctic circle, Norilsk is home to the world's largest heavy metal smelting complex, where more than 4 million tons of cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, arsenic, selenium and zinc are released into the air every year.

The British newspaper The Guardian ran a piece about this town where a river was found to run red due to a leak from the Nickel plant.

I just watched this short movie about this city and I had two conflicting feelings about it. On the one hand I thought the city to be quite atmospheric and so I would be interested in going there to make photos, but on the other hand the level of pollution there made me think better of it.

It's an insightful documentary about the life of the people there. What I like about this documentary is it feels as if there is no agenda to the story telling. They are not trying to tell you how bad it is here, or what we can do about it: instead it gives us an insight into the lives of some of the people here. You are left to form your own opinion and I didn't feel as if the director was trying to sway me either way.

Still, from a photographer's point of view, there is beauty or at least a photogenic aspect to a polluted place and Norilsk has a visual story to share with us.