VORKUTA, THE GHOST VILLAGE.

In Russia there is a small town forgotten by man and by time, where houses and streets are at the mercy of the frost. It’s the small town of Vorkuta, in the North of the Komi Republic, near the Kara Sea. In short, it is in a remote corner of North-Western Russia where, for at least seven months a year, the only meteorological phenomenon present is freezing. Vorkuta, a village located just north of the city, is a ghost town where time seems to have stopped in the early 90s. Its origins date back to  the second half of the last century around some mines, but the exhaustion of the same and the simultaneous collapse of the Soviet Union forced the inhabitants to leave this village in search of better fortunes. In the Soviet period Vorkuta was a popular work destination thanks to the mines . In the 1990s, however, coal production in the mines decreased because of the global industry crisis: this led to a gradual emptying of the town.
Today that village is totally uninhabited and invaded by ice: the houses have stood still for at least thirty years and immersed in a surreal atmosphere.