‘I wanted to be the Devil myself’
The forgotten history of how a Soviet photographer glorified the Gulag's White Sea Canal
During my last two trips, I worked in the local archives, searching for traces of work by the Soviet photographer Alexander Rodchenko, who—secretly working for the Soviet authorities in 1933—photographed the USSR’s first major construction project to use Gulag prison labor. In a special report, I writes about my trip and research, and how memories of the people who built the White Sea Canal have faded from Russia.