Slava works at the most remote weather station in the Arctic, with his Morse code machine and his Yuri Gagarin cuttings. Then one day, a photographer came bearing oranges, champagne and a parrot

Evgenia Arbugaeva was born in Tiksi, a tiny port in arctic Russia, but moved to Moscow to study, before becoming a photographer in New York. Life in the Big Apple couldn’t have been further from the frozen world she had left behind. But, despite all its distractions, she yearned to go back. “It was isolated,” she says of Tiksi. “But it was fun. We had to create our own little world.”

Arbugaeva returned to the Arctic for her latest project, Weather Man. “There was a meteorological station in Tiksi I used to go to with my dad,” she says. “He had friends there. There are many of these stations in the Arctic, far away and hard to reach. I was always curious about who would move to the middle of nowhere.”

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She set off in search of “these people who are so dedicated to the north, so open and calm”, boarding an icebreaker that delivers annual supplies to remote outposts. “I spent two months on the ship and visited 22 weather stations,” she says. “I was looking for this romantic person of the north, a lonely arctic wolf. But most of the stations weren’t at all as I imagined. Many have been modernised into characterless facilities staffed by young people using new technology.”

One station, however, stood out: Khodovarikha, on the Pechora Sea. “It’s like the worst of all the arctic stations. Nobody wants to work there. So I was curious. When we landed, I saw Slava. His place was absolutely frozen in time. He had a portrait of Yuri Gagarin cut out of a 1961 newspaper. He still had a Morse code machine and his wallpaper was from another era. I felt so comfortable with him.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Slava having lunch in his house and talking to his bird, Kesha. Photograph: Evgenia Arbugaeva/The Photographers' Gallery

After that initial brief encounter, Arbugaeva vowed to return to Slava. She tried contacting him by radio but, after several frustrating days with no response, just took a chance and went anyway. “I hired a helicopter and flew there for the [2014] new year. I brought him some oranges, champagne and a little bird. When the helicopter landed, he met me. ‘Did you know I was coming?’ I asked. ‘No, but you’re welcome,’ he replied.”

She stayed for two and a half weeks, photographing Slava, who was 63 and had been there for 13 years, as he measured temperature, precipitation and wind. He had been posted to Khodovarikha after a career on ships and was due to retire soon. “He is this place,” says Arbugaeva. “It was winter, so it was very dark. I was looking for a character who could deliver this feeling of polar night. That’s something I grew up with. Slava was the perfect representative.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An ancient communication set – and Soviet-era wallpaper – at Khodovarikha. Photograph: Evgenia Arbugaeva/The Photographers' Gallery

Before shooting the Weather Man project, Arbugaeva had also been taking photos around Tiksi. “I’ve been haunted by the idea of going back ever since we left.” This happened when she was eight, the disintegration of the Soviet Union forcing her family to leave for Yakutsk, the regional capital, 1,000 frozen kilometres inland and the coldest city on Earth.

“My childhood memories of Tiksi were all really bright, really beautiful,” she says. “I started to question myself: was it really this way, or did my mind make it up? It felt like a very important part of my childhood had ended there and I desperately wanted to revisit it.”

She was shocked by Tiksi’s decline. “Everything was different. There was nothing there, nothing of what I remember.” She didn’t like any of the photographs she took back home to New York, but a little later she noticed something she had overlooked. “This picture – of a girl I met on the shore, throwing stones in the water – was the only one that caught my attention. I realised this meant something, this girl, this cold sea.”

So Arbugaeva went back and tracked the girl down – not too daunting a task in such a small community. “I went to her home and everything in their apartment was almost exactly like ours. It was like a flashback. And Tanya, the girl, reminded me of myself.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Arctic light: a girl playing with her dog in Tiksi, north-east Russia. Photograph: Evgenia Arbugaeva/Courtesy the Photographers' Gallery

In contrast to the darkness of Weather Man, Arbugaeva’s Tiksi photographs are bright and whimsical, their compositions and vivid colours redolent of the books she read there as a child.

Where will Arbugaeva find herself next? “I’m exploring new landscapes – Africa, southeast Asia – but I’m always thinking about the north. I’ll keep working in the Arctic. My family is there – and my heart.”