Russia through the train window (+ slideshow)

JSC Russian Railways and Anton Lange hold all the rights on the photos displayed in this slide-show
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The exhibition «Russia through the Train Window» is a joint project by JSC Russian Railways and the Russian photographer Anton Lange. The aim is to show modern-day Russia through the camera lens of a photographer traveling by rail across this vast country. Lange’s pictures create a marvelously vibrant impression of Russia and underscore the uniqueness of its various regions, the grandeur of its territorial expanses.

«Russia through the Train Window» is part of a series of one-man photo exhibitions united around a common theme and logically continuing each other: 21st century Russia, different aspects of the country and society, a new view of its geographical particularities, its cultural and historical legacy and the life of ordinary Russians. No project of this kind in the history of Russian photography has ever covered such a vast territory: from Russia’s southernmost point to the Arctic Circle.

Lange’s pictures were taken between November 2006 and December 2009 as he journeyed by train around Russia’s most remarkable regions: the Kolskiy Peninsula and the northwest European part of Russia, central regions, the famous Golden Ring, the Volga, the Black Sea coast and the North Caucasus, the Urals, Siberia, districts along the Baikal-Amur main line (BAM) and the main Transsiberian railway, Lake Baikal, the Russian Far East, Sakhalin Island…

«We were very interested by the idea of looking at the map of Russia through the lens of a professional photographer traveling by rail. That is how «Russia through the Train Window» came into being. Landscapes and portraits, emotions and moods, the play of form and color — this is not just photography, it is an attempt to express the inimitable image of Russia.

Variety in unity: that is the leitmotif of «Russia through the Train Window». This exhibition will give viewers a unique opportunity to assess a portrait of our country composed of hundreds of images seen through the eyes of the talented photographer Anton Lange. I don’t think anyone will be unaffected by his pictures.

I invite you on this amazing journey!»

Vladmir Yakunin
President of JSC Russian Railways


«The railways in Russia have been such a profound part of our life for so long that they have become not only the most accessible means of transportation but a means of knowing and penetrating the life of our country. They are an adventure during which the curious traveler makes countless discoveries and finds the unusual in the everyday; they are not just a journey from Point A to Point B but a journey in nature, in Russia’s geography, history, ethnography, culture…

We came up with the idea of a photographic journey in collaboration with Russian Railways. «Russia through the Train Window» is a figurative name. The pictures in this exhibition were not all taken from the window of a train or locomotive. It is a journey whose main idea is forward motion.»

Anton Lange, photographer

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