Chet Gordon: THE TRANS SIBERIAN
photos by Chet Gordon
After I worked in Russia on three previous humanitarian surgical missions, I longed to return on my own to do something big. There is nothing bigger than the Trans-Siberian Railway across the Russian Federation.
When I volunteered with Operation Smile of Norfolk, VA, documenting their cleft and palate reconstructive surgery on children in the central Siberian city of Tomsk, I heard stories of families and guardians with orphaned children and toddlers who rode the trains for three and four days, for medical screening to receive free surgery that the "Amerikanskies" were providing. It was no guarantee that a child would even be selected for the operations offered by the American plastic surgeons and support team. That always played heavy on my head. For the longest time I couldn't quite grasp the vastness that these potential patients had traveled. Turning away patients on these missions is always heartbreaking, and their travel time was an additional burden to endure.
Another strong influence on even thinking about attempting something like riding the Trans-Sib came from one of those characters you meet on a story and just sticks with you. I met George "Gino" Magee, a bona fide hobo, 12 years ago while doing a freelance story for the NY Times in a Paterson, NJ men's shelter. Befriending Gino and spending time there in the shelter really opened my eyes to the whole hidden world of "hobos, tramps" riding the rails and the "bulls" and “brakemen” who worked the industrial rail yards nationwide, particularly in the West.
Gino was the first subject I actually returned to meet, after an assignment, even staying overnight in the shelter. I carried a cassette tape recorder with me, to gather as much as I could. We attempted to ride a freight train out of a rail yard in Newark, NJ, but ended up on a work train that dead-ended a few towns down the line in a factory yard in central NJ. Despite his criminal past and serious hustling, I learned from him about that serious underground life. He regularly spoke of riding the trains in Europe and Russia, and I never forgot him.
I initially wanted to make the Trans-Siberian route from Moscow to Bejing, when I first began discussing and researching the project two-plus years ago with a Russian colleague who had acted a translator for our medical missions in Tomsk. That first idea for a Russian train journey quickly collapsed when the SARS epidemic made international headlines. I later learned it would be next to impossible to travel into mainland China and obtain the proper visas for shooting at a border crossing, like we're accustomed to.
I was bummed for about year.
I finally got a break about 8 months ago when I stumbled upon some old emails from a Russian photographer, Ivan Sharapolov from that Siberian town where I'd volunteered for two summers. He had landed a job in Moscow-- at the National Railroad of all places-- as one of their staff photographers. As the emails, faxes and planning progressed, I knew it'd all work out. Ivan was thrilled that I wanted to come over and ride the "Trans-Sib" with him as translator, guide and all around good-guy. We of course needed the proper "papers" to allow us to photograph in the stations and stops along the route. This would prove to be helpful later along the route when we were “detained" while shooting on a brief stop in the major transit station of Tiaga. A quick call to Moscow confirmed all of our permissions and we soon had the station manager tagging along with us through the station and the platform for the next 30 minutes or so, even buying us lunch. He wanted to make sure we didn't "see" anything we weren't supposed to.
I guess it's kind of hard to describe how massive the railroad network is in Russia, but if you consider there are 13 time zones and 21 regions, and it took two 5 -/+ hour flights to return across the country to Moscow from the port city of Vladivostok, than you can see how important the Russian rail network is for the common people who can't afford to fly. One doesn't mention arrival and departure times to certain cities and regions along the routes; instead, it's "three nights and four days" to so and so...? Even when the periodic station stops are billed as coming up in the next "four or five hours," the travel times and distances are still hard to comprehend.
But the train “wagons” and the train were clean, efficient, and fast. There were times at night when I'd swear we weren't even moving: you didn't hear the continual clacking of the rails. We ate well, and cheaply, mostly from the local villagers at the stops along the route (although there is a dining car onboard), got plenty of reading done, and even had electricity onboard, which allowed us to keep our camera and laptop batteries charged and even watch a few movies on the computer. I brought a lot of instant oatmeal, coffee & tea, as there's a samovar on each wagon for readily available boiling water. The toilets were clean and you could take a "navy shower." if you wished.
After a few days, we were sort of "celebrities" on the first train, with the "provonitsias" checking up on our needs, and even inviting us for drinks at all hours. It took me a few days to sort of get into the groove of things onboard, especially pulling into a station for a brief stop, and hustling out to try and make images along the platforms and stations. Some of the stops were anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. So those shooting opportunities were usually brief. Some early morning stops were difficult to scramble off the train and work, but I remember one stop near Vladivostok in the early morning fog. It was all like a dream.
The International Herald Tribune published three of my images last Friday in their travel column, "In Season” and that made it rewarding too. I’m already thinking of returning to Russia to make a winter ride with Ivan, possibly on a northern line above the artic circle, when the snow reaches upwards of 5 meters, to the height of the locomotives.
c Chet Gordon
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posted by AMY at 9:24 AM
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