2024-12-22T05:47:27-05:00 https://archinect.com/news/article/120449872/haunting-beauty-alexander-gronsky-photographs-russia-s-polluted-north Alexander Walter 2015-02-10T20:12:00-05:00 >2015-02-11T22:47:08-05:00 <img src="https://archinect.gumlet.io/uploads/1d/1d176207d8b475b87b8b1940965790a2?fit=crop&auto=compress%2Cformat&enlarge=true&w=1200" border="0" /><em><p>Russia&rsquo;s northern cities are a triumph of will; grand settlements in the middle of snow and darkness where people are dwarfed by the outsized factories they&rsquo;ve built and helpless next to the industrial waste those factories create.&nbsp;Photographer Alexander Gronsky&rsquo;s images of Norilsk seem both close to reality and something out of a dream. [...] But at the same time it is a place of heart-wrenching almost Arcadian beauty. A place of pale skies and metallic rivers.</p></em><br /><br /><p>Make sure to also check out the other tales in <em>Calvert Journal</em>'s excellent mini-series, "<a href="http://calvertjournal.com/features/show/3636" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Six stories&nbsp;from the Russian North</a>."&nbsp;</p>