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• ARCTIC BLUES

THE BIG CHILL

The Russian winter tends to be romanticised, but it doesn’t feel much like a Christmas card when you’re actually there. SIMON ROBERTS captures its astringent beauty for our photo essay, and talks about it to ALEXANDRA LENNOX

Arctic Russia is cold, harsh, strange and vast—it stretches nearly halfway round the world, from Finland to Alaska. If you want to photograph it at its coldest, you have to be quick. “During the winter months”, Simon Roberts says, “it’s perpetual dusk and by 4 o’clock it’s pitch black. I was working in temperatures of minus 25 to minus 40, which left little time to take the pictures as it was difficult to expose my hands for long.”

Pictured: Monchegorsk, Murmansk Region, North-West Russia “The snowy fields around Monchegorsk disguise the fact that it is one of the most polluted towns in Russia,” says Simon Roberts. The church pictured in the foreground was built just a year ago and is surrounded by dachas (traditional Russian country homes), a retreat for the rich and poor alike. Since the demise of communism, the church has enjoyed a revival.

• Closing Time

A NATION OF SHOPKEEPERS

Before there were chainstores and malls, there were single shops--and the British were famous for keeping them. Now they are dying out. The photographer Nick Dawe has made it his mission to capture them for posterity. Here we present his pictures as a photo essay, and he explains to Nick Coleman what draws him to these singular establishments.

"This is a personal project which has been going on for years. It emerged out of another one, “Roadside Britain”, which is just things of interest I catch sight of on the move. Some of these images were found that way too, but with a difference--I began to find that some of the pictures weren’t just about places but also about character."

Pictured: Powell’s Bakery, Poplar, East London
"Powell’s was part of a small chain around the Isle of Dogs area of East London—now unfortunately all gone. One of the shops baked the bread, which was then distributed around the others. When people look at Molly in my portfolio, they comment that it’s a shame there is so little stock. I have to point out that the picture was taken after lunch—there’s not much left on the shelves because she’s had a good day."

• THE NATIONAL THEATRE

BEHIND THE SCENES

The National Theatre has been called a castle, a cathedral, a temple of art, a palace of culture and a nuclear-power station. But the theatre's idea of itself is changing. What was once a spot for earnest plays and capital-A "Art" has become a friendlier, sunnier place with the vitality of a carnival. Brian Harris, a former chief photographer of the Independent , spent a month behind the scenes capturing  preparations for "War Horse", a National hit that is now earning ovations on the West End.  Robert Butler, a former theatre critic, describes the drama within the fortress.

The National Theatre at night
LED lights transform the concrete exterior into a winning display of orange, purple, green and blue. When the National opened here in 1976, in an area badly hit by the Blitz, it was a lonely bastion of culture on the south bank. Among the many changes at the National over 32 years, the biggest has been its location. The stretch of riverbank that runs from Westminster Bridge to Tower Bridge has become London’s high street for the arts, with an annual footfall of 19m people. A little further east sits Shakespeare’s Globe, Tate Modern and the steely curves of Norman Foster’s City Hall.

• 21st-Century Slaves

A HIDDEN INDIA (1)

They’re not in chains, but they are shackled by debt, paid virtually nothing and treated harshly. Pete Pattisson goes to India to capture the face of slavery today in our Spring 2009 photo essay. Introduction by The Economist’s Asia editor, Simon Long

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT 
Migrant workers from Uttar Pradesh work late at a brick kiln in Punjab. Sometimes the kiln shuts for lack of demand, so the workers earn nothing and have to borrow more from their employers. There is even an informal market where workers can be “sold” to other kiln-owners, just like slaves. 

• BERLIN REVISITED

20 YEARS AFTER THE WALL (1)

In 1989 BRIAN HARRIS photographed the fall of the Berlin wall. Twenty years on, he returned to capture today’s Berlin for our photo essay in the Summer 2009 issue of Intelligent Life. Here we show a selection of Harris’s pictures with his commentary, introduced by TIM DE LISLE, editor of Intelligent Life. We are grateful to the Independent for permission to use photos from 1989.

Pictured: The Holocaust memorial, officially known as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which opened in 2005 in the old no-man’s-land between East and West. "I saw this boy skipping from stone to stone who wouldn’t even have been born in 1989. It reminded me of something the architect, Peter Eisenman, said when it opened: 'People will dance on top of the pillars'."

• KENYA

FACES OF AIDS (1)

Most photographs that capture Kenya appear in technicolour, zooming in on the country’s vibrant hues and landscapes. Their subjects are usually animals. (Tourism propped up the Kenyan economy until 2007, when the presidential election dragged down the industry.) This collection is quite different. In 2005 and 2007 ALEXANDRA SUICH, now a contributor to The Economist, worked with organisations in Kenya that provide at-home care to people who are HIV-positive. There she met and photographed a number of people, mostly women, who are fighting the disease or caring for people stricken with it.

Pictured: Charlotte Washe, Malindi, Kenya
Government hospitals are often oversubscribed, with two to a bed and patients on the floor. The hospital in this photograph is small and private, with only a few beds. Charlotte Washe, a nurse, helps oversee the hospital. In her free time she serves as a community health worker, providing at-home care to people who are HIV-positive and are too poor, too afraid or too sick to travel to hospitals for care.