Reindeer migration

“The Nenets are an indigenous people from the Yamal peninsula who traditionally live from reindeer husbandry, with herds that can consist of up to 10,000 animals. These people migrate for thousands of kilometres every year, moving their herds to new grazing grounds every couple of days. This pictures shows reindeer during one of those migrations.

This picture is so special for me, because the route being followed lies directly along the railway embankment of the so-called “dead track”, which is behind the title of my series Ghosts along the dead track. It's part of the railway line built at the Arctic Circle, by Gulag prisoners in the Stalin era, and which I travelled along when I was in Western Siberia. For nearly 70 years it has remained unused most of the year; it lies in disrepair, grown over by vegetation, under a blanket of snow.

During the week I stayed with the Nenets, I had no real sense of how close or far we were from the Arctic Circle railway, but, during the migration that I was able to accompany, I realised that we were passing directly alongside the track; the herd trotted in a line for many, many kilometres, following the railway embankment. The scene couldn't have been choreographed better! It was a moment when two strands of my work – the one about nomadic life in the tundra and the other about the Stalin railway – came together perfectly.

The Leica M did a great job of capturing the scene, which became particularly clear when I printed the picture in large format for an exhibition: every single reindeer stands out down to the smallest detail."