What does the concept of "instinct" in photography mean to you?

Ida Taube: You know, I tend to associate "instinct" more with hunting. I would rather say "intuition". It is crucially important for me to get into the state of mind when you want to pick up your camera and not only start shooting but to capture the atmosphere, people that create it, their eyes, emotions of a man who is in harmony with Nature. And to convey the moment in every shot.

Do you mean there is an impulse, a spark that makes you pick up the camera? Back in the 1950s, Henri Cartier-Bresson wrote that poetry in photography appears when two elements suddenly clash and a spark flares up between them.

Ida Taube: I don't take one or a few shots at a time, as many photographers, who mostly work with staged photography, do. They don't waste their effort, but think through and build the shot taking depth, angle and other parameters into account. I am a person of emotional flow who's catching the wave. And then, out of a dozen or even a hundred shots, you can choose the three or four that, as the art historian and critic Victor Misiano aptly puts it, create "a sense of presence". This is how he defined not only my credo, but also my place in photography and my professional life.

Do you consider yourself a photojournalist, photo-anthropologist or fine art photographer? And where are the boundaries for you?

Ida Taube: Since 2000, a kind of watershed, my life has been connected in one way or another with the Arctic and (Chukotka. Early on working there as a volunteer for the regional "Pole of Hope" foundation and then for the Russian Red Cross, I was fully immersed in solving urgent social problems related to medicine, education, and adjustment to new living conditions for children from settlements hundreds of kilometers away from each other. With no paved roads, no Internet access, nor real connection with the Main Land, as they call it there. That was the period when I was closer to reporting: capturing a series of events was indeed one of my priorities. But even back then I tried to strike a balance and explored portraiture - a person, his state of mind, was important to me. Involuntarily it was reflected in my works. Ethnographic aspect is important, but it is a different kind of photography, more in the GEO magazine style with a focus on exotics. A mindset, atmosphere, and image are the sources of my inspiration, which is more inherent in a fine art photographer.

The exhibition entitled "The Place of Power" was recently on view at the Nadya Brykina Gallery in Moscow. I assume the title was not accidental. What's behind it?

יIda Taube: I think that everyone conducts a search looking for places that would surprise, inspire, and renew him. Photographers and travellers have their own paths and routes. Most of the encounters result in a photo series or project whether you meet dawns on the banks of the Ganges or in the mountains of Nepal, try to catch the play of light in the canyons of America or admire the waterfalls of Canada or Brazil. You can't help turning on the camera. Goethe's lines that Nature is the only book, every page of which is full of profound content come to my mind every time I recollect these destinations. But over time, I came to realise that the most important things in life are the encounters and people you cross paths with along the way. It doesn't matter where, be it Alaska, France, Chukotka or India. And the place of real strength is your family, where you are accepted and loved as you are.

It was your life and work in the Far North that brought you into photography almost twenty years ago. How has your perception of the Arctic and Chukotka in particular changed over time?

יIda Taube: Obviously, it changed a lot as time went on in terms of understanding people there, their environment and perception of the world. It took me years torealise the essence of what the locals told us about: in their free time they go to the shore and sit there for hours watching the ocean. In general, life beyond the horizon is a very important parameter of people's life far from modern civilisation, which helps them preserve their traditional culture and spiritual world. And for me, the state of immersion and seeing the Universe and its order that is in front of you has also become very important.

In your opinion, can any professional photographer work in the Far North or does it require specific qualities, including personal traits?

Ida Taube: A professional can work anywhere. But I am convinced that the North demands that you engage with it. Serious work there requires co-creation. You need tolerance in a broad sense. Everything happens there in spite of, not due to.

In what way do you mix documentary and artistic images? How important is the narrative aspect to you?

Ida Taube: It depends on the task at hand. For example, the project which Mikhail Krunov and I are currently working on with the Museum of Architecture, needs documentation and precise stylistic selection from the entire corpus of works on this theme, which is about two thousand photographs.

How closely do you work with curators? Which of the recent museum exhibitions do you find the most successful and reflective of your vision?

Ida Taube: The curator of my first photo exhibitions was invariably Mikhail Krunov, who influenced both my work and my vision in art. Yet with museum exhibitions it's different:curatorial group practices are common, and mutual understanding and trust are an important factor here. For example, a creative group worked on the project "Chukotka. Starting Point" at the Museum of Oriental Art in Moscow. Our co-operation with Sarah Vinitz and her foundation, with Mikhail Bronstein as a museum curator and Mila Bredikhina as an independent guest curator was decisive for the success of the show. It is sometimes difficult to be dispassionate in choosing the best pieces for a show because for me each selected work not only has artistic parameters but is also charged with a personal story. The opinion of a curator might be crucial in this regard.

What are you working on now and what exhibitions do you have in store for the audience this year?

Ida Taube: The exhibition "Chukotka. Starting Point", which was first held in 2022, will continue its journey across Russia - it has already travelled to Abkhazia and Adygea. In July it will be part of the Russian Festival of Contemporary Culture "Vyksa Festival", and in September the show is to open in Nizhny Novgorod, in the Volga-Vyatka branch of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (the Arsenal). I would like to complete the theme of the Far North, and there is a new project, still in the working version, "From Chukotka to Kaliningrad".

Mikhail Krunov, artist and curator of Ida Taube's exhibitions:

Speaking of Ida Taube's method of work, I would call it not an impulse, but a certain kind of a resonance. She gets involved in a situation, and the most ordinary thing, transformed, becomes history.

Mikhail Krunov about the architectural series: "Geometric abstraction dominates my search in art and Ida's landscape photography in the minimalism genre is particularly appealing to me. It is these works that are at the core of the exhibition at the Museum of Architecture. The style of these works was determined by the landscape and architecture itself"