Impressions Gallery

Award-winning Magnum photographer Carl De Keyzer documents contemporary life in Siberia's prison camps in this UK premiere.

To many Westerners, Siberia remains geographically and culturally distant, a place notorious for the horror of Stalin's prison camps. Officially disbanded in 1960, the legacy of the Gulag persists, and today the camps still house a free labour force of around a million prisoners. De Keyzer photographed some 35 camps over a two year period, revealing a harsh way of life totally isolated from the rest of the world.

Shaven-headed, gaunt young men crowd together to eat fish and hewn blocks of bread; a prisoner takes an icy outdoor shower in -40c conditions; another recovers from TB in a bleak ward where orange check fabric serves for both blankets and pyjamas. Alongside these images, more surprising revelations are made - a gang of brawny tattooed inmates labour under a bright blue sky; a smiling prisoner holds up his new-born baby, and female convicts smooch at the Saturday night disco.

De Keyzer's images, often in startling colour, jolt us with their immediacy and offer a rare insight into the lives of those inhabiting these isolated institutions.

Zona forms the second part of In From the Cold, Impressions' winter exhibition and events season.

Zona is organised by Magnum Photos.