Andrei Rozen’s portfolio set me mind-traveling from Kaliningrad back to Novgorod, where I spent last Autumn. This portrait of Andre Leon Talley, for Russian Vogue, is shot in Novgorod’s Vitoslavitsa museum, an outdoor exhibition of Russia’s wooden building heritage.

A repro theme park it isn’t. The buildings were brought plank and nail from villages throughout Russia and from several centuries. You’ll find churches, chapels, barns and houses - though there’s little difference between a barn and a house. Houses still accommodated ploughs and livestock while the serfs squatted on a kind of elevated shelf at one end.

Vitoslavitsa is rattling, 20 minute bus ride into the country from Novgorod. In the summer it makes a very pleasant, peasant’s day out, complete with national costume. In deep snow, you can imagine stepping into a Russian fairy tale. But it was just grey and miserable when I visited. Don’t choose a dull day, as the interiors are quite dark and the girls seem keen to save the lighting bill.

In the absence of photofloods, I grabbed these pics from the net. The shots below are by Bill Weir who, when not writing guide-books about Arizona, cycles around Russia and Asia.

See also, The Seven Wonders of Novgorod, #1 and #2