Yuri lives on a garbage dump together with 15 dogs. Here the air is clear, he has his peace. He built the hut where he lives from things that he found on the spot, feeding his dogs with garbage. The man seems satisfied with his life.

24-year-old photographer Nanna Heitmann photographed him and other people living around the river Yenisei. For several weeks she drove from the Autonomous Republic of Tuva to Yeniseisk in Siberia.

Last year the student spent a semester abroad in the Siberian Tomsk. Before that, she knew little about her mother's homeland, knew only Moscow and what she had learned from Soviet children's films and Slavic fairy tales.

Now she visited small settlements such as Erzhey or Schagonar, but also larger cities like Krasnoyarsk or Kyzyl. All places are near the Yenisei.

The river is considered the richest river in Siberia and one of the largest in Russia. Altogether it is around 4000 kilometers long, rises on the Mongolian border and flows into the Kara Sea of ​​the Arctic Ocean - Heitmann did not get that far.

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Wrestlers, ballet dancers and insect collectors: people around the Yenisei

Her last stop was Yeniseysk: if she had traveled even farther into the far north of Siberia, she would have had to resort to the mail ship, which is the only means of transport connecting the villages.

Heitmann wanted to document the life along the river, but also to explore the mythology of the region. She quickly realized that the Yenisei was not the central theme for her, but that she was more concerned with the ways of life and the characters of the people.

If you live here, you have to be tough

She met people like the biologist Nikolai Putinzov, who owns the largest collection of insects and amphibians in Tuva; Vaselisa, who lives in a village where Old Believers follow centuries-old Christian rites; or Julia from Krasnoyarsk, who dreams of becoming a ballet dancer and trains for five hours a day.

Many people would move out of the area because they feel too cold and too lonely or they could not find work. Those who stay are tough, would defy all adverse circumstances.

The photographer stayed overnight with locals, whom she met through contacts, or simply in a tent. On the way she was driving, driving on paved roads, then on gravel roads and narrow paths.

The fact that she did not drain the whole river was not just because of the bad infrastructure. "I underestimated the distances," she says. In the summer, she wants to travel to Siberia again and hopes to reach even high in the north.