Contemporary Russian artist and documentary photographer Danila Tkachenko brings a new landscape of the former Soviet Union through his photographs of unfinished and restricted areas, all once deemed significant by the Union. The places in Tkachenko’s “Restricted Areas”, along with its utopian ideology and endeavors, have become obselete by the end of the 20th century. The multiple award-winning photographic series Restricted Areas by Tkachenko can be currently viewed at the Fotogalerie Friedrichshain in Berlin
Fascinating photographs of Soviet era installations and equipment. Although in color the colors are so muted that at first I thought they were black and white. I particularly liked the shot above – looks like something from “Star Wars”. I was curious about how he’d made the photographs and gained some insights from an interesting National Geographic Article (Remnants of a Failed Utopia in the Former Soviet Union) which Tkachenko states: “I needed a lot of snow falling, This created a special atmosphere in the photographs, a kind of … very diffused light.”
According to Wikipedia:
Danila Tkachenko (born 1989) is a Russian visual artist working in the field of documentary photography.
Tkachenko won a World Press Photo first prize for his series Escape. Another series, Restricted areas, won the European Publishers Award for Photography. His work has been exhibited in Russia, Europe and north America.
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Tkachenko was born in Moscow in 1989. In 2014 he gained a degree in documentary photography from Rodchenko School of Photography and Multimedia.
In 2014 Tkachenko won a World Press Photo first prize in the Staged portraits stories category for his series called Escape, about people who have withdrawn from society to live as hermits in nature.
His series Restricted areas, documenting Russia’s abandoned secret military cities, won the European Publishers Award for Photography in 2015.
Tkachenko’s works are included in Salsali Private Museum permanent collection.