"Wild East Meets Wild West: Photographs from Nakhodka, Russia by Georgy Pakin"

A photography exhibition documenting a remarkable chapter in Russian-American relations opens Sept. 30 and runs through Jan. 6.
"Wild East Meets Wild West: Photographs from Nakhodka, Russia by Georgy Pakin" provides a taste of life in a distant, little-known part of the Pacific Rim that has much in common with our own region. Pakin will be in Bellingham for the opening. More at whatcommuseum.org.



Bellingham Cold Storage (BCS) founder Jim Talbot introduced Bellingham and the Pacific Northwest… Show more to Nakhodka in 1976 through the creation of joint-fishing operations— a venture that flourished even as official US and USSR relations remained hostile.



“We’re thrilled to collaborate with the museum on this show,” said Stowe Talbot, executive vice president of BCS, and the sister city chairperson for Nakhodka from 1993 to 2003. “The relationship with Nakhodka and Bellingham has fostered a greater understanding of each other’s cultures and I’m honored to help keep the ties strong into the next generation.”



Nakhodka photojournalist Georgy Pakin's photos vividly portray daily life in and around Nakhodka during Soviet and post-Soviet times. The exhibition documents the history of the joint Soviet-American fishing company, MRC, as well as the Nakhodka-Bellingham sister-city relationship.


Exhibition – related programs
The public is welcome to join a special tour of the exhibition guided by Georgy Pakin, Sunday, September 30 at 2 PM. Visitors also have the chance to learn more about the joint Soviet American fishing venture and the sister-city relationship with programs in November. See the Whatcom Museum events calendar for details, www.whatcommuseum.org.

About Georgy Pakin
Mr. Pakin began his amateur interest in photography at an early age, became a full-time professional in his 30s when he moved from Siberia to the Russian Far East, and pursued his profession over 40 years. His subjects include leaders from Khrushchev to Gorbachev and Yeltsin, and the day-to-day world of shipyards, fishermen, commerce, sports, cultural life, relations with Asia and the rest of the world, and the stunning natural features of what both Russians and Americans came to call The Wild East. Pakin’s works have been shown in two exhibits in Nakhodka, in 2004 and 2010.

Show less