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In the early 1990s, Emile Hyperion Dubuisson went tot Russia as assistant director to a film crew shooting a documentary commissioned by a French consultancy firm. The Franco-Russian team embarked on a journey across the former Soviet Union – with the sole stipulation that they go to north-west Siberia, a region containing some of the largest natural gas reserves in the world. Afther months spent travelling across the country, the crew finally reached the remote Yamal Pensinula, located on the rim of the Siberian Arctic Circle, stopping in the towns of Salekhard and Sabetta, near Tambey. With temperatures ranging from -20 to -50 degrees Celsius, the crew couldn’t go outside for more than twenty minutes at a time, and so filming was difficult. Disoriented by the extreme conditions, and unable to do much film-making, Dubuisson began making short excursions around the villages where gas workers, scientists and local reindeer herders lived and worked, taking pictures with a small all-weather camera. On his return to Moscow, Dubuisson struggled to process his film, due to the Russian labelling on the chemicals and equipment. Thinking that the images were beyond saving, he put the negatives to one side. It was only many years later that Dubuisson returned to photography professionally, and was finally able to retrieve a series of images from his time in Siberia. The documentary, however, would never be made, and the whole enterprise seems to have been a cover for industrial espionage.