Wonderful photographs of soviet era relics

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Source: Soviet Relics of “Restricted Areas” by Danila Tkachenko · Lomography

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.

…

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Press Photo first prize in the Staged portraits stories category for his series called Escape, about people who have withdrawn from society to live as hermits in nature.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.

Exterior staircase – Chambord

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Taken in 2002 with a Canon Powershot S10 compact 2.1 megapixel camera at Chambord Castle during a very pleasant vacation in the Loire Valley. Chambord is particularly famous for a “double helix” spiral staircase, but I believe that this isn’t it (the famous one is inside the castle while this one is outside). It’s still pretty impressive though – as is the rest of the castle, particularly the exterior. The interior is rather bare and cheerless.

I was supposed to have studied at the University of Tours in the Loire Valley, and even registered. Somehow, I got distracted and ended up staying for a couple of months with friends near Lille. I should have gone with my original plan. The Loire Valley is gorgeous, while Lille is industrial and far from scenic. If you want to get a good feel for this part of France read “Germinal” by Emil Zola (who was also a photography enthusiast and a pretty decent photographer – see Emil Zola was a photographer?!

VW Microbus

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I included this picture in an earlier post. Nowadays I usually add only one picture to a post, but it those days I used to put in more. In this particular case this picture was in a post with four others. The other four worked better in black and white and for some inexplicable reason I decided to convert this one to black and white too. I guess I must have thought that a single brightly colored picture along side four black and white pictures would be too jarring. I should have just left it out. It clearly only really works in color.

So here it is in it full glory.

Back in 2004 my wife and myself decided to head out for an Easter weekend farther north. We stayed in a picturesque Bed and Breakfast and later went for a walk around in the town. During this walk we came across this brightly painted vehicle. Although I’m not an expert in such things I believe it’s a Volkswagen Type 2, Microbus. Of course what struck me about it was the “over the top” color scheme.

Where were we staying? Why Woodstock, NY of course. It seemed to me that this vehicle came for the famous Woodstock Festival (which actually didn’t take place in Woodstock, but rather in Bethel some 43 miles away) and never left!

Shadows on a wall

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I’m fond of shadows, see:

  • Tree Shadows on a Wall
  • Early Morning Shadows at the Flea Market
  • A Couple of Shadows
  • Shadows on the Kitchen Floor

    • I took this picture of shadows falling on a red wall (a converted garage I believe) of a house only a few doors down from ours. It was taken around 5:00 pm with the sun was going down and casting shadows on the side of this building.

    After I’d taken it I had two related decisions: 1) should I keep it in its original color version or convert it to black and white? 2) should I keep or remove the meter to the left of the picture. I say that they are related because in the color version the meter was a bright blue color that made it the first thing that you noticed. So although I liked the red building I decided to try a black and white conversion. In this version the meter is much less distracting and even adds a bit of visual interest. I decided to go with B&W and to keep the meter.