Moscow in winter: a photographer's view

Jack Davies gives a different perspective on the much-maligned colder months in Russia’s capital

All photos (c) Jack Davies

Russian winter: much fabled, much feared. Yet beautiful too, when you know how to handle it. I have been living in Moscow over the past few years, and becoming acquainted with ‘real winter’ has been an intense experience. I’m from England; winter is grey and drizzly, neither pleasant nor particularly fierce. We muddle through and winter seeps damply into spring and summer may or may not appear.

In Moscow winter strikes suddenly. The chill cuts in and summer in a blast of icy wind is over. It smothers a brief, resplendent autumn, tough and slushy at the start, settling into icy white and still blue skies. Skaters take to the ice and the boulevards are lit up in innumerably novel and gaudy ways. Fur coats appear from their hibernation. Summer terraces are dismantled and we forget they were ever there.

I have spent a few of these winters walking around with my camera, trying to get to know the city and also attempting to capture the atmosphere of this season. I wanted to see how the snow altered the streets, made fresh compositions. I wanted to see how people went about their daily lives, semi-snowed in. How they worked in it, how they played in it. I wanted to see it all: how the roofs were cleared, the roads kept safe, how people coped with the icy streets (answer: much better than myself) and made it to work on time.

At first it was a novelty- a city transformed by snow, cars buried in piles of it, deep puddles of slush, cascades tumbling from the roof tops. And then it became familiar. They were my streets and I too was trying to get to work. The more I walked the more I understood the aesthetic of the city- its particular details, motifs, materials, patterns, colours. I saw layers of the past mingling with the modern city, changing rapidly. New concrete, under new snow. Old colours peeking through.

I have put together this series to give a flavour of this full-on time of year, for those who have yet to experience it, those who know (and perhaps miss) it, and maybe even those who right now are battling with it… and need reminding of its glory! We brace ourselves and step into it, perhaps allowing ourselves the odd day off, content to watch the snow falling from the comfort of the kitchen. This year I’m away, but I hope to back amongst it soon.

You can see more of this series on my website: www.jackdavies.photo and I have prints available at www.jackdavies.gallery. My instagram is @jacktravelphoto.