twenty years ago this country. to some degree says. all. of. us have been trying. to get a job. where it's taken. thanks for staying with us three thirty pm in moscow these are our t. headlines syria under a new u.s. sanctions after dozens were killed in friday's anti-government protest united nations bronson investigation while western interference is being blamed by some for making matters worse. new york smokers will soon find lighting up could leave them lighter in the pocket they're among the targets of new restrictive bylaws which is which could see fines imposed for minor misbehavior as a city struggles to raise much needed cash. and

a russian army conscripts facing bullying and abuse with sometimes fatal results the brutality is leaving the bereaved or relatives desperately calling for action over a grain and deadly cold. up next hour he talks with a photographer whose camera is capturing the rare and delicate heritage of the arctic and he's determined not to see it right that stay with us. hello yellow welcome to spotlight the show on our take i'm twenty three my guest in

the studio is brian alexander. in a rapidly moving well we don't have an opportunity to hit the pause button and give a particular frame a closer look maybe if we did notice more flaws in our actions and have a chance to rethink and maybe even do so here's where photography fails they get our guest bryan alexander has brought some real here to what troubling from his favorite actor. ryan alexander's real love with the arctic started during his first visit to the region in nine hundred seventy one he got to with difficulties and extremely low temperatures only to experience the hospitality and generosity of the local they revealed to him the riches of their land and brian says if it hadn't been for them it would be impossible to take such astounding shots of the arctic but the mostly on taj region is in danger the civilized world trampling on the

primal landscape and the centuries old way of life of the indigenous peoples of the progress is rushing headlong into it and there seems to be north force that can slow it down don't force a culture. into the show thank you thank thank you very much for being with us well first of all we just saw this wonderful picture of you somewhere in there. and persecute you all just as this guy i mean i mean just as a vision this is the business people of all infer what first of all i would ask you what's your attitude to. to this green movement people that say no to fur is never wear fur coats and so on and so forth. well i think it's you do look as a supporter at least a picture no no no absolutely not i mean i think that if you turned you were like the shoes are you got a little wallet or whatever the whole question of this becomes sort of

a role really. i think that compared with the industrial forms of food production. the idea of hunting is a is a much more civilized and. a much better way of painting food you know the animals running wild for. all but the last second or so of its life and then it's shot it's much better than being you know one of these factory farming food producing units a lot of africa comes from and as a matter of fact one of the one of the arguments of those people who say no to for is that is that the high tech jackets. are the ones that produced in china probably they're better they're warmer would you say this is true or this traditional clothing used by other people is better i think there's a. question for the full for warms. reindeer skin clothing

which as hollow as is infinitely warmer than anything i would use anything else there's no question i mean i've sat on a sled being pulled behind a snowmobile for ten eleven hours of the time minus forty and i thought very very comfortably want. to face well even if there is that covered with. the. you know there are ways of sort of inside the head out of the window and saw. you as far as i understood you first you first went to greenland back in nineteen seventy one you know thirty one and since then you're always you traveled to siberia greenland alaska canada arctic on terra thing all over how did you get involved with that region how the why well i got involved really when i was studying photography in london and i did a project on the on the technical problems the photography at subzero temperatures

and that took me to the polar research institute in cambridge where i sort of happened upon. books written by grass and played a frog and about the innuit of northwest greenland i got interested in the seemed to me to make a lot more it was a lot more interesting than what they did than a lot of explorers who were just after cheating some sort of geographical soil you're actually started by trying to make the camera work at subzero temperatures yet not just the camera working at subzero temperatures but it was also i don't know that but the actual processing film minus forty and being able to drive it you don't tell me you're processing folder no i'm not doing the project i was working on was basically looking into that because actually the american military had done a lot of research on this scene in antarctica. but there's no more thought in these days is there well there is film these days and in fact film is rather better than

digital for extreme cold but yes you're right you know we're entering a digital we've entered into a digital world what why would you say that for extreme cold film is very good at all those little things you know. i mean film is something there's something that can freeze great. the problem with digital is that it's largely electronic and electronic control don't go well together and so on. you find i mean the camera that i use now which is a digital camera it works down quite comfortably to about minus thirty five but it stops at minus forty and some of the photos that you take it will go on the what you will like you press the button and nothing happens stop and whereas you know in with with film i've used them down to minus fifty eight celsius in a good year. ok now you. of course have. a lot of challenges their whole world working at the in this region one of them

that you just mentioned challenges for the camera but what kind of challenge for yourself keeps you going there again and again because it should be a challenge it's not the comfrey but the new it's just it's the images i mean you know this last march i was. with a group who took the rain you heard the synch aquatica perhaps the most traditional group of. indigenous people that i've ever worked with and you know in them we were living in i suppose you'd relatively uncomfortable conditions and each morning you know when i woke up i was thinking to myself you know. doing this sixty one isn't quite as easy as it was it doing it at twenty two but then i look at the pictures and that's what keeps me going that usually you should have millions of those pictures where you will be more well because the arctic strangely and i knew people i'd never come across these people before i'd never photographed

a year rangar before which i've just done so over these years i know i read that you have been through pretty dangerous situation a fellow fell into ice water where you could minus forty and so on and so forth here do you have something. in mind in your memory which you could consider as the most dangerous. episode in your life or falling through your points through falling through sea ice in the water when a story is danger but it's only sort of a problem for a few minutes because that you either get out or you don't. but i suppose the most significant thing i can remember was being adrift with a group of hunters we'd gone were something off the north coast of greenland and then during the night the ice broke up and we withdrew for purposes yes i just know cracked and off we went you were but we woke up we were floating between london canada and we were about sort of i don't know seventy kilometers off of the coast

and there for i think nearly five days before we were rescued by helicopter so it during that time you're kind of going through highs and lows and wondering whether it's going to be your last photo shoot well you have been here have been focusing on people here and the indigenous people and you have been witnessing in registering changes in their life in their attitude even their appearance what's that made true and what would you say today well we're going to hit enter the twenty first century here. i mean the main trend is one of not as far as naked people concerned is one of modernization there's much more you know access they have access to t.v.'s now a lot of people even remote hunting clams home you know d.v.d. players and televisions and stuff so there's been a general modernization i suppose and with that comes a sort of pick your ration of traditional culture. there well in many ways if there's nothing wrong with you know the modernizing and and

cultures have to change you can't cultures in a museum but. when people are you know. sort of if you like you want to say educated from their own culture if you give them a sort of danish educational russian education then it should let you know education should lead somewhere there should be jobs or something for them to do and that's what the danger as i see it at the moment in a lot of northern communities there just aren't the jobs so you know the people are left sort of between two worlds they're neither in their traditional culture nor they generally kind of accepted into european or whatever culture what would you about it is a very if if those people lived in the guinness people of the north get educated get more modernize neither they may still be there for us but watch d.v.d. and listen to listen to that i felt that is and so i think they they were absolutely fine is it ok are you absolutely sure we lose something ship show. their

humanity and lose something important if they stop drinking and i said stop stop. but go to go to cities and start going to work in any event what know that i mean no cultures that say i have to change i think it's a shame of cultures. of diving you know people are up in arms when i speculate species of animal that is up from there comes extinct. you know but i feel pretty much the same i think it's sad i mean the it's the the sort of mics. and wealth of cultures in our world that enrich is it and so every time you lose one i think it's a it's that when a person like yourself comes to live with a church or you see he looks at this way of life and what people do and usually say well i think they are happier the nurse you live in the cities i've always thought this was this was an ark recy or no and i think that's probably less if you talk about a traditional right life i think there's less. less stress less i

think generally people randy herders that i've. been with certainly i would say are sort of on the whole fairly content with their lot and they're in a you know pretty good shape when it comes to survival because i can give you an example that in one in the early ninety's when i first traveled to the man this is these were chaotic times in the north of russia i mean you couldn't get food you couldn't get i mean it wasn't transport they were just no in the problems i then went out with a group of men are trying to herd us. and spend altogether three months for them on the tundra it was a very different story everything was very organized so we had arranged to meet we had issue as much food as we needed we had very good shelter we had rain discontents as much firewood as we needed to keep warm we had transport in many ways we were much better off than people who were actually in the village or the towns of the r. and probably

a lot of places in russia says brian alexander an award winning photographer spotlight would be back shortly but after a break so stay with us we'll continue the interview in less than a minute. wealthy british science. sometimes. markets finance scandals find out what's really happening to the global economy with much cause or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds of reports

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what about the spotlight i'm going on and just to remind you that my guest in the studio today is brian alexander an award winning photographer. you spend most of your time. taking pictures in the far north of arctic and antarctic regions and these regions of the planet are considered to be like the true barometer is of what's the what's changing in the climate on the whole planet so so is there really any visible change over there. certainly visible change i mean i've seen it in areas of north greenland which i've been sort of visiting sort of on

a fairly regular basis for the past thirty nine years so i've seen glaciers have receded and also what tends to be happening is the. ice around the coasts of the arctic and the rivers and lakes are freezing later each of the time or later in the autumn and that same ice is then breaking up earlier in the spring and that poses problems for people who are me to travel on them on the ice and rivers. cherry alexander won the b.b.c. world life photographer of the year back in ninety four if yes that's right yeah with a picture of a blue eyes barry. and what i read about it is that is that one of the reasons is that. those blue eyes are very rare those days but no they're not this is climate change also the reason i don't think blue icebergs were ever particularly rarely great is that the picture of us you know those topics you know that's that happens to be a picture of

a piece of ice that's taken at midday but if you look at whole another she was taken at. day in january during the polar night and it's a piece of ice with the moon reflecting off. so so so so with the back on one of those who i was doing one of my blue eyes you know the blue i suppose you know if they weren't there never that rare i mean that was just a particularly stunningly beautiful one and of course it had penguins on it it just it looked absolutely delightful and it was a great shot but i think that. what's happening now is that. they're more common i'm not sure it is i just think that there's more people going to the arctic and going to the antelope you can seeing those a rush for economic economic exploration of the region of the arctic specially right now do you think it's an opportunity or do you think it's more a danger. for this region which you really love well i think you know for the rain for the people who are there it's not so much an opportunity i think it's probably

a danger but you know i presume you're referring to all the oil and gas that's in the arctic and it's something that we need and i mean russia needs it for its own economy and you know the rest of the world needs it too as consumers so it's something that i think that is sort of inevitable. that these resources are are developed it's not a saying of whether it's sort of good or bad it's just in here something that's inevitably going to happen well let's see what people in russia now thing about investment in the arctic spotlight. on that has the answers. hi there well the arctic has been a top discussion lately due to its undiscovered oil and gas reserves which estimates a quarter of the world's resources will go warming is causing you know the ice caps which in turn is triggering an increasing interest to the area let's see if people in this country think that it's time to start investing into the region. i think it

is very important for our country to invest money into the arctic because of its resources which were discovered a long time ago and from this time there were no technologies to get to those resources but today such technologies exist and many countries will try to get to the regions and try to get a bigger piece of the pie at the moment i think it's a very good idea for our country at this moment because it could serve as a good foundation for future generations. i think it's necessary for any state which is aspiring to be global because the arctic is our future undiscovered resources you're the best in the world i think it is very important to invest money into the arctic because we need to protect our sea shells. yes i think we need to invest money into the arctic but it shouldn't be watching best months because russia has enough issues within the country which are left in financial support from our government. think we should because if we don't do it somebody else

will definitely get to those undiscovered reserves. i think development of technology for more. yes i think it's very important because of the reserves and the northern reached asia. i've got his good question gas in the economic development of the arctic destroy the everyday lives of the indigenous peoples of the new. well the answer is yes if you go yes i absolutely will it i think. it's almost saw it i think it will in the areas you know obviously where the main mining or oil and gas extraction. is taking place here but it's all if we compare the life of the indigenous people of the north of the sample the indians and caliban world or america you know the states are saying that they are the life of the indians is the story and what's

left is more like museums of what used to be but the life over there is still worth do you agree but i'm not i'm sure there's a lot of creen indians in in northern canada who wouldn't agree that their life has been destroyed they may have you know a lot of modern boats and. a lot of snowmobiles on and all the other modern paraphernalia but they're still hunting and trapping and this it's you know the price of food in the arctic can be very high so this use of traditional foods is kind of important. or do you think that. the sort of the big industrial complex is the big industries. that russia is planning and already starting to construct in its arctic regions are big. and their impact on the environment will be will be very serious

well there's a potential for of course environmental disasters we've seen what happened in the gulf of mexico but from a point of view of. destroying cancers yeah because you heard it was only a man which is one of the areas that has is very very rich and gas. you know they face a very uncertain future because it's a question of the ownership of the land they. need land to be able to migrate with their reindeer and they follow the traditional routes you know there's a view of a nomadic people of just sort of wandering aimlessly across the tundra it's not that at all they have specific roots sort of laying there and has been taking for centuries now is the question if a gas company then comes and wants to drill there what's going to happen. if they're no longer going to be allowed there and that certainly happened in areas of the amar where whole large areas of the tundra just been closed off and. all people

are screwed in from it apart from you know official gas company workers so there's a you know there's a very serious sort of threat from this oil and gas and you know the question is whether how you compensate for that and whether in fact people will think well prime minister putin is a matter of few you don't see me you don't seem to be pretty much worried about the city or situation but the russian prime minister he ordered to start cleaning up cleaning the mess in the in the air russian arctic and he said well do you think that this is because he knows better than you out there i mean that make logical situation or is just like popping one i think you're talking about the mess that's already there i think is what he's referring to. and that goes back you know to the fifty's when you know people were sort of exposed exploring in the area and they just saw it as a sort of

a wasteland and they just discarded all the rubbish and all of that they didn't didn't use and it's a was a very similar case in the north of canada. as well but they're there they've taken very active steps on the spend a lot of money so you know people will cautious yes i think in via we have our mental attitudes have changed dramatically since that is people are much more aware of. sort of preserving of the sort of our lives as a sort of play. steen environment it just came up that we've been talking about it writing all that i want is close to russia what about the antarctic is it is the situation given print. yes absolutely i mean the antarctic is protected by treaty and at the moment and look at this because yes but the there is you know at the moment the antarctic treaty prevents any industrialisation being carried out on. how long that would last if. vast deposits of oil or gas or other sort of all

minerals were discovered there i don't know i suspect not too long but at the moment it's impossible so so what really needs the attention of the environmentalists is today is the arctic yes. yes because i think they are while it needs it more than the i mean there are other areas of the world where they need a lot of attention from environmentalist not just the arctic but you know the antarctic and say is it's already rate well regulated and controlled the arctic is much less thank you thank you very much for being with us and just a reminder that great guest in this studio today was an award winning photographer brian alexander and that's it for them from all of us here if you're yourself spotlight or have someone in mind you think i should print they start to drop me a line in calgary canada r.t.t. that. we'll be back with president stay on russia today and take thank you thank you betty.

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