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Travel

Rediscover Failed Eastern Utopias in Stark Winter Photographs

Exploring Danila Tkachenko's silent and snowy photographs of abandoned buildings in Eastern Europe.

As society creates utopian visions of the future and strives towards constant technological progress, Danila Tkachenko’s current project explores forgotten and incomplete dreams of the past. Restricted Areas examines the human condition and its inherent inertia for continual improvement.

At one point in time, many of these places in Russia, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan were at the height of technological progress, but over the years, they have become abandoned and obsolete. Tkachenko’s project uncovers and captures these once important structures in places that are now considered ghost towns.

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The Moscow-based photographer and winner of this year’s European Publishers Award for Photography only takes the Restricted Areas photographs during the dead of winter. These snowy images of stunted progress isolate the structures from their given geography and in turn, become stills for examination.

The Creators Project got a chance to ask Danila a couple questions about his inspiration and process for his project:

The Creators Project: When did you first get your idea to begin the Restricted Areas project?

Danila Tkachenko: This idea came to me by accident. I went to visit my grandmother who lives in a closed and previously secret town where in Soviet times the scientists were developing the nuclear bomb. I learned that in the 60s there was a catastrophe, an explosion at the nuclear waste storage site. An immense territory was contaminated, and among people living there, the level of chronic diseases connected to this accident is considerable. This brought me to the idea about the downside of the technical progress which can not only send humans to the bright future, but also bring terrible harm.

Could you talk about how the series developed?

I was looking for sites which were anticipating the breakthrough in the technical progress, but resulted in a failure. It took me a long time to wait for the proper weather conditions, because winters are nowadays not as snowy as they used to be. I believe that it is also the consequence of the "progress," and as the result—of global warming.

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How did you find these sites? How often were you going to these sites to photograph?

The preliminary preparation takes considerable time—for example, searching the objects for shooting, which is usually based on the online research. I was traveling to shoot these locations only in winter. It was sometimes unpredictable: as I mentioned, I had to wait for a suitable weather forecast, but it was not guaranteeing anything as some objects were very far. It sometimes happened that by the time I reached them, the weather changed dramatically.

What type of camera are you using?

I use a medium format camera, Mamiya 7, which is quite light, at the same time giving me high image quality. The way to the objects took a long time, so the weight of the camera was playing its role and was facilitating the journey.

Why do you find these technological failures so interesting?

For me these failures are a metaphor, the image and the means to interpret my idea about the utopian strive to the technological progress.

Check out more of Tkachenko's photos below:

Discover more of Danila Tkachenko’s work on his website.

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