Giving thanks

It’s Thanksgiving in Canada today, and I’m really far away from home, so here’s a toast to Eric Guth, my companion for Thanksgiving:

My team mate and dear friend doing what he does: making photographs and sharing them every way he can. The process and the moment.

Eric’s cameras show up in odd places. In the library, a five year old girl who can barely lift a big SLR is clicking away. At the walrus camp, a young man enters our coal-heated cabin and snaps a photo of me. On the tundra at night, three Russian men laugh outside our tent as Eric gets them to hold still for a long exposure.

I try to take some photos too, if only to use what Eric has taught me and to show you who is looking through that viewfinder and making all of these images. This is Eric in his element.

We just spent three weeks based in a Soviet era apartment, searching for stories under every rock (and oil barrel) we could find. It became an unlikely routine: meet up for breakfast (always buckwheat), practice our Russian and step out the door into the unknown.

We’re beginning to move west now, to Anadyr, Yakutia and eventually Moscow. But these early days on the tundra will stay with me forever.