Our first antipode is Entre Rios in Argentina and Shanghai. Here the difference could not be greater: as the Perez Brothers try to make a living by collecting money when the occasional car uses their hand-made bridge across a small river, the camera flips upside down before showing the construction of a gigantic bridge and some ferry operations in a rainy and murky Shanghai. The pace of life, the color of the sky, the level of civilization—in all these aspects the difference between the locations could not be greater. Yet again and again Kossakovsky merges the two antipodes in one frame, using the dividing line as a mirror and flipping one world upside down, as if it were a reflection, only shifted in time (and progress) along the axis.

With the other antipodes the contrasts are much less sharp, and often images from one half of the globe appear to form “sympathies” rather than antipathies, visually and musically (musical arrangements by Aleksandr Popov): Lake Baikal and Patagonia (Chile) share similar mountainous landscapes. The flight of an eagle is observed, allowing the camera to capture amazing shots of the area. Here there are women working the garden, there is a shepherd in his house playing with numerous cats, who could equally belong to the Siberian countryside. Russian folk song accompanies the Chilean’s herd.

The African Kubu in Botswana sits opposite Hawaii. The desert with its animal life sits on the other side of an island almost made uninhabitable by volcano eruptions, as lava flows, bulges, and burns out on its way into the sea.