Pyramiden was a Soviet Mining settlement in Svalbard, Norway, 79 degrees north of the Equator. That's high, high up in the artic circle. Norway has absolute soveriegnty over the group of islands, but other signatory countries to the Svalbard Treaty of 1920 are allowed to use them for commerical activities. Sweden began mining operations at Pyramiden (named for the Pyramid shaped mountain that dominates the skyline) in 1910 and then sold them to mining companies from the Soviet Union in 1927. In the late 1940s it was developed into a full scale mining settlement by Trust Arktikugol, a giant Russian Mining company. From the 1950s to the 1980s, Pyramiden was a grand embodiment of Soviet social ambitions, with a family-centric population of over 1,000, a library with over 50,00 books, and a large sports and cultural centre, including a cinema/theatre that showed movies every night of the week. It was also self-reliant and from 1958, food was free of charge and in abundance, thanks to regular shipments from the mainland and its own production of milk, meat, eggs and vegetables (grown in a greenhouse). In addition to this, between 1955 and 1998 Pyramiden shipped over 9 million tonnes of coal. In 1998, the mining operations were deemed economically unsustainable and the settlement was abandoned, with the inhabitants being told to pack their things and prepare to leave within a few hours. Everything that wasn't absolutely necessary to take was left behind.

Now, Polar Bears, Reindeer and thousands of Seagulls are the only residents, along with a transient population of 5 or so humans (that must carry a gun at all times due to the Polar Bears), who are slowly upgrading facilities at Pyramiden to accomodate tourists. The entire library of 50,000 books remains untouched, and what is probably the northernmost grand piano in the world (a Red Oktober) sits in the cultural centre, decaying and unplayed.

You can read more about Pyramiden at the Norwegian Polar Institute homepage here.

San Miguel Cuevas is a town in the impoversished, mountainous Mixteca region of Mexico that has lost 80% of it's population to emigration to the United States.

See more of these great images here at The Big Picture (via boston.com), or you might like to go here to find out more, and maybe help photographer Matt Black with his kickstarter campaign to document both the village and its way of life before it possibly disappears.

Letter from Campbell Soup Company to Mr Andy Warhol, 1964.

Via rhizome.org