Fall 2012: 'Magadan: The People and the Place'

Reception: Monday, Oct. 1, 3-5 p.m.
UAA/APU Consortium Library, Room 307 (Lew Haines Meeting Room)

Chancellor Tom Case invites the Anchorage community to the opening of a special exhibit titled "Magadan: The People and the Place." This is an exhibit of photographs by internationally known photographers Pavel Zhdanov and Andrey Osipov and "is dedicated to all those people in Magadan and Alaska who gave unselfishly of themselves to the melting of the Ice Curtain that separated us during the Cold War."

Magadan, a sister city to Anchorage, is located on the Sea of Okhotsk in the Russian Far East. It is the economic, scientific, educational, health care and cultural center of the Kolyma Region. The region is rich in natural resources and its economy is centered on gold mining, commercial fishing and energy production.

The exhibit will be on display through January 15, 2013.

About the photographers:

Pavel Zhdanov was born in a town near Tula in Central Russia. In 1963 he moved with his parents to Northeastern Russia. In 1981 he graduated from the Magadan State Pedagogical Institute, where he studied in the Department of Russian Language and Literature. After graduation he held various teaching positions in communities in the Kolyma and Chukotka. His first publications appeared in 1978, but it wasn't until the year 2000 that he chose publishing as his career. He was the editor-in-chief of Magadan Airlines' in-flight magazine "Sputnik," and in 2001 he became the director of the publishing house Okhotnik. Pavel's writings and photographs have appeared in numerous photographic albums, book and booklets, as well as in local and Russian Far East magazines and newspapers, such as "The World of the North," "Magadanskaya Pravda," "Far Eastern Capital" and others. Over the past nine years, Okhotnik has produced numerous books and photo albums. He works together with Moscow and Far Eastern publishing houses. He has been practicing photography since he was 12 years old.

Andrey Osipov was born in Magadan. At age 12 he was enrolled in the Art and Computer Department of the Magadan Children's Art School. He graduated from the Northeastern State University in Magadan with a degree in management. In 2004 he began working as the art director of the publishing house Okhotnik. His work takes him all over the Magadan Region. His books, booklets and brochures can be found at the Scott Polar Research Institute Library, Cambridge University, the Russian State Library in Moscow and the Magadan Pushkin Scientific Library. Every year his work wins prizes at the Far Eastern Book Fair, and his photographs are published in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kaluga, Khabarovsk and Magadan. He has been practicing photography since he was 17.