It would be interesting to visit, on the assumption that people who live hard party hard, and just to see how people make the best of a non-ideal situation, especially in isolation. But it doesn't sound like it's easy to get travel visas.
I'd be interested in hearing the backstory of how this photo essay came together. The photographer, Sergey Ponomarev, is a Pulitzer Prize winner [0] for freelance work he did as a NYT freelancer and is born and based in Moscow. It sounds like the city is under tight restrictions but presumably Russia's security services trusted him enough to let him in.
From the stories of people who visited or lived in Norilsk (a decade ago though), it sounded like it was the closest approximation of hell on the planet.
Svalbard is nice, except (IMHO, if you stay for a while) there isn't enough people there.
Longyearbyen (Largest settlement) has got on the order of 2,000 inhabitants which basically means that in a few weeks, all the faces are familiar and the ones which aren't are tourists.
Now, this obviously leads to a close-knit community and isn't inherently a bad thing - but I'd find it a bit claustrophobic in a while. (Doubly so if I was single, as the dating pool is very, very limited.)
The scenery is hard to beat, though.
Fun fact: Part of the deal when Norway gained sovereignty over Svalbard was that anyone from anywhere could settle there without bothering with visas and the like - as long as you can provide for yourself. (This, admittedly, is somewhat more difficult than it sounds, as just about all housing there is is owned by the Store Norske Spitsbergen Kullkompani, the coal mine which until satellite communications became a thing was Longyearbyen's raison d'etre - so finding shelter can be a challenge if you decide to give Spitsbergen a try)
