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Sad glimpses of an era gone by
Bleak documentation of the remnants of the Soviet period is made soulless by an absence of human beings, writes JOHN GREEN
(L to R) Worker and Kolkhoz Woman sculpture by Vera Mukhina, 1937, Moscow; abandoned office for the construction of the Nadezhda (Hope) factory in Norilsk, Russia; Shaybale housing estate, built in 1974, Novokuznetsk Russia Built in 1974
[Arseniy Kotov]
ANGUS REID urges us to understand the persecution of Jason Arday from a political and historical perspective, and to see the victim in human terms
Re-releases of the classics Gypsy Rhumba and Buena Vista Social Club, and a stunning album by Palestinian artist Faris Ishaq
Nothing, says ANDY HEDGECOCK, can rescue this undistinguished amalgam of ponderous melodrama and shallow philosophical speculation
JAMIE BRITTON invites readers to visit 3,500 locals as part of a marathon artistic pub crawl
JOHN GREEN welcomes a valuable and incisive analysis of a world become hyperpolitical but without the mass movement institutions to represent it
Soviet Seasons
By Arseniy Kotov
Fuel Design & Publishing
£24.34
THIS is the follow-up volume to Kotov’s debut Soviet Cities. It is an odd collection of photos, all in colour, featuring Soviet-era urban landscapes of housing estates and industrial sites, interspersed with murals, mosaics and monumental sculptures, many in a state of semi-dereliction. He covers four areas of the post-Soviet republics – Siberia, Ukraine, European Russia and the Caucasus.
Each area is separated incongruously by season, but you would be hard-put to guess in which season any one of the photographs was taken, as they are all drained of real colour, mostly sepia-toned, taken at dusk, night-time or under grey skies. The viewer is confronted with almost identical images of densely packed, faceless housing blocks, seemingly dumped into the landscapes.
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