Brutalism East: majestic concrete meets ornament and color in the revelatory world of Soviet Asian architecture
Soviet Asia explores the Soviet modernist architecture of Central Asia. Italian photographers Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego crossed the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, documenting buildings constructed from the 1950s until the fall of the USSR.
The resulting images showcase the majestic, largely unknown, modernist buildings of the region. Museums, housing complexes, universities, circuses, ritual palaces―all were constructed using a composite aesthetic. Influenced by Persian and Islamic architecture, pattern and mosaic motifs articulated a connection with Central Asia. Gray concrete slabs were juxtaposed with colourful tiling and rectilinear shapes broken by ornate curved forms: the brutal designs normally associated with Soviet-era architecture were reconstructed with Eastern characteristics.
Many of the buildings shown in Soviet Asia are recorded here for the first time, making this book an important document, as, despite the recent revival of interest in Brutalist and modernist architecture, a number of them remain under threat of demolition. The publication includes two contextual essays by Alessandro De Magistris and Marco Buttino.
Brutalism East: majestic concrete meets ornament and color in the revelatory world of Soviet Asian architecture
Soviet Asia explores the Soviet modernist architecture of…
Brutalist hotels, avant-garde monuments and futurist TV towers: rare and previously unpublished vintage postcards from the Eastern Bloc
Brutal concrete hotels, futurist TV towers, heroic statues of workers―this collection of Soviet-era postcards documents the uncompromising landscape of the Eastern Bloc through its buildings and monuments. These are interspersed with quotes from prominent figures of the time, which both support and confound the ideologies presented in the images.
In contrast to the photographs of a ruined and abandoned Soviet empire we are accustomed to seeing today, the scenes depicted here publicize the bright future of communism: social housing blocks, palaces of culture and monuments to comradeship. Dating from the 1960s to the 1980s, they offer a nostalgic yet revealing insight into social and architectural values of the time, acting as a window through which we can examine cars, people and, of course, buildings. These postcards, sanctioned by the authorities, were intended to show the world what living in communism looked like.
Instead, this postcard propaganda inadvertently communicates other messages: outside the House of Political Enlightenment in Yerevan, the flowerbed reads "Glory to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union"; in Novopolotsk, art-school pupils paint plein air, their subject a housing estate; at the Irkutsk Polytechnic Institute students stroll past a 16-foot-tall concrete hammer and sickle. These postcards are at once sinister, funny, poignant and surreal.
Brutalist hotels, avant-garde monuments and futurist TV towers: rare and previously unpublished vintage postcards from the Eastern Bloc
In the process of decommunisation, Ukraine has toppled all its Lenin monuments. The authors have hunted down and photographed these banned Soviet statues, revealing their inglorious fate. As Russia celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, Ukraine struggles to achieve complete decommunization. Perhaps the most dramatic demonstration of this process is the phenomenon of Leninopad (Lenin-fall)—the toppling of Lenin statues. In 2015 the Ukrainian parliament passed legislation banning these monuments as symbols of the obsolete Soviet regime. From an original population of 5500 in 1991, today not a single Lenin statue remains standing in Ukraine.
Photographer Niels Ackermann and journalist Sébastien Gobert, both based in Kyiv, have scoured the country in search of the remains of these toppled figures. They found them in the most unlikely of places: Lenin inhabits gardens, scrap yards and store rooms. He has fallen on hard times—cut into pieces; daubed with paint in the colors of the Ukrainian flag; transformed into a Cossack or Darth Vader—but despite these attempts to reduce their status, the statues retain a sinister quality, resisting all efforts to separate them from their history.
These compelling images are combined with witness testimonies to form a unique insight, revealing how Ukrainians perceive their country, and how they are grappling with the legacy of their Soviet past to conceive a new vision of the future.
In the process of decommunisation, Ukraine has toppled all its Lenin monuments. The authors have hunted down and photographed these banned Soviet statues, revealing their…
This book is the first to offer a comprehensive collection of photographs and text on Soviet-era sanatoriums from Armenia to Uzbekistan. All the photographs are specially commissioned for the book, taken by a team of young photographers specialising in the post-Soviet territories.
Originally conceived in the 1920s, sanatoriums afforded workers a place to holiday, courtesy of a state-funded voucher system. At their peak they were visited by millions of citizens across the USSR every year. A combination of medical institution and spa, the era's sanatoriums are among the most innovative buildings of their time.
Although aesthetically diverse, Soviet utopian values permeated every aspect: western holidays were perceived as decadent. By contrast, sanatorium breaks were intended to edify and strengthen visitors - health professionals carefully monitored guests throughout their stay, so they could return to work with renewed vigour. Certain sanatoriums became known for their specialist treatments, such as crude oil baths and radon water douches.
This book is the first to offer a comprehensive collection of photographs and text on Soviet-era sanatoriums from Armenia to Uzbekistan. All the photographs are specially…
After the popular and critical success of his first book, Christopher Herwig has returned to the former Soviet Union to hunt for more Soviet Bus Stops. In this second volume, as well as discovering unexpected examples in the remotest areas of Georgia and Ukraine, Herwig turns his camera to Russia itself. Following exhaustive research, he drove 15,000 km from coast to coast across the largest country in the world, in pursuit of new variations of this singular architectural form.
A foreword by renowned architecture and culture critic Owen Hatherley, reveals new information on the origins of the Soviet bus stop. Examining the government policy that allowed these ‘small architectural forms’ to flourish, he explains how they reflected Soviet values, and how ultimately they remained – despite their incredible individuality – far-flung outposts of Soviet ideology.
After the popular and critical success of his first book, Christopher Herwig has returned to the former Soviet Union to hunt for more Soviet Bus Stops. In this second volume, as…
From the acclaimed authors of the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedias and Soviet Space Dogs comes Alcohol, a glorious and exhaustive collection of previously unpublished Soviet anti-alcohol posters. The book includes examples from the 1960s through to the 1980s, but focuses on posters produced during Mikhail Gorbachev’s campaign initiated in 1985. These posters attempted to sober up Soviet citizens by forcing them to confront the issues associated with excessive alcohol consumption. This government-led urgency allowed the poster designers to present the anti-alcohol message in the most graphic terms: they depicted drunks literally trapped inside the bottle or being strangled by “the green snake.” Their protagonists are paralytic freeloaders and shirkers who always neglect their families, drive under the influence, produce substandard work, are smashed when pregnant and present a constant danger to fellow citizens. A two-part essay by renowned cultural historian Alexei Plutser-Sarno attempts to explain, from a Russian perspective, the reasons behind this phenomenon.
From the acclaimed authors of the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedias and Soviet Space Dogs comes Alcohol, a glorious and exhaustive collection of previously unpublished Soviet…
Danzig Baldaev's father was an academic, an ethnologist who found himself imprisoned under Soviet rule as an enemy of the people. In fact much of Baldaev's family moved through the Soviet prison system, while he became a guard. At his father's suggestion, Danzig used his access to document and study the tattoos that were pervasive among the truly criminal portion of the prison population, the vory v zakonye, or legitimate thieves, a semi-professional class who kept their own brutal laws. During his 30 years supervising inmates in St. Petersburg's notorious Kresty Prison, Baldaev recorded more than 3,000 of their tattoos and parsed their meanings, in the drawings and text that made the first volume of the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia a bestseller. This essential second volume, which collects all-new, previously unseen photographs and drawings, goes to the extremes of his incredible collection. Sergei Vasiliev's photographs authenticate the images, Baldaev's drawings make sense of them and through them both we glimpse an extraordinary world where the criminal's position, history and even sexual preference are displayed indelibly on his body.
Danzig Baldaev's father was an academic, an ethnologist who found himself imprisoned under Soviet rule as an enemy of the people. In fact much of Baldaev's family moved through…
Фотограф Кристофер Хервиг, родом из Англии, создал серию фотографий, под названием "Soviet Bus Stops".
Центром внимания проекта стали автобусные остановки в странах бывшего Советского Союза. Кристофер проделал путь, охватывающий более 18000 миль через такие страны, как: Казахстан, Туркменистан, Узбекистан, Кыргызстан, Таджикистан, Украина, Молдова, Армения, Грузия, Литва, Латвия, Беларусь и Эстония.
Идея фотографировать остановки появилась у фотографа еще 12 лет назад, когда он отправился в путешествие из Лондона в Санкт-Петербург на велосипеде. Он поставил себе цель делать одну фотографию каждый час. Тогда то он и заметил эти "памятники" советской культуры.
Фотограф Кристофер Хервиг, родом из Англии, создал серию фотографий, под названием "Soviet Bus Stops".
Центром внимания проекта стали автобусные остановки в странах бывшего…
As the Soviet Union struggled along the path to communism, food shortages were commonplace, and both Party authorities and Soviet citizens had to apply every ounce of ingenuity to maximize often-inadequate resources. The stories and recipes contained in the СССР Cook Book reflect these turbulent times: from basic subsistence meals consumed by the average citizen (like okroshka, a cold soup made with the fermented beverage kvass) to extravagant banquets held by the political elite (suckling pig with buckwheat), with a scattering of classics (beef stroganoff) in between. Each recipe is introduced with a historical story or anecdote from the period, and illustrated using images sourced from original Soviet recipe books collected by the authors, food historians Olga and Pavel Syutkin.
Many of the sometimes extraordinary-looking pictures depict dishes whose recipes used unobtainable ingredients, placing them firmly in the realm of "aspirational" fantasy for the average Soviet household. In their content and presentation, the recipes and illustrations act as windows into the cuisine and culture of the era.
СССР Cook Book offers an illustrated history of Soviet cuisine told through the stories and popular recipes from the period. The book contains 60 recipes from the Soviet period, including such delicacies as aspic, borscht, caviar and herring, by way of bird's milk cake and pelmeni.
As the Soviet Union struggled along the path to communism, food shortages were commonplace, and both Party authorities and Soviet citizens had to apply every ounce of ingenuity to…
This book is dedicated to the Soviet Space Dogs, who played a crucial part in the Soviet Space program. These homeless dogs, plucked from the streets of Moscow, were selected because they fitted the program's criteria: weighing no more than 15 pounds, measuring no more than 14 inches in length, robust, photogenic and with a calm temperament. These characteristics enabled the dogs to withstand the extensive training that was needed to prepare them for suborbital, then for orbital, space fights. On 3 November 1957, the dog Laika was the first Earth-born creature to enter space, making her instantly famous around the world. She did not return. Her death, a few hours after launching, transformed her into a legendary symbol of sacrifice. Two further strays, Belka and Strelka, were the first beings to make it back from space, and were swiftly immortalized in children's books and cartoons. Images of the Space Dogs proliferated, reproduced on everyday goods across the Soviet Union: cigarette packets, tins of sweets, badges, stamps and postcards all bore their likenesses. "Soviet Space Dogs" uses these unique items to illustrate the story (in fact and fiction) of how they became fairytale idols. The first book to document these items, it contains more than 350 images, almost all of which are previously unpublished, and many of which have never been seen before outside Russia. The rich and varied ephemera (from cigarette packets to sweet wrappers and children's toys) of Soviet graphics will have immense appeal to the art and design market, as well as appealing to dog-lovers everywhere.
This book is dedicated to the Soviet Space Dogs, who played a crucial part in the Soviet Space program. These homeless dogs, plucked from the streets of Moscow, were selected…
Soviets features unpublished drawings from the archive of Danzig Baldaev. Made in secret, they satirize the Communist Party system and expose the absurdities of Soviet life. Baldaev touches on a wide range of subjects, from drinking (Alcoholics and Shirkers) to the Afghan war (The Shady Enterprise), via dissent (Censorship, Paranoia and Suspicion) and religion (Atheism as an Ideology). He reveals the cracks in the crumbling socialist structure, describing the realities of living in a country whose leaders are in pursuit of an ideal that will never arrive. The drawings date from the 1950s to the period immediately before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, with caricatures exposing communism's winners and losers: the stagnation of the system, the corruption of its politicians and the effect of this on the ordinary soviet citizen. Baldaev's drawings are contrasted with classic propaganda-style photographs taken by Sergei Vasiliev for the newspaper Vercherny Chelyabinsk. These photographs depict the world the Communist leaders dreamed of: where the local factory produced its millionth tractor and heroic workers fulfilled their five-year plans. It is impossible to imagine the daily reality of living under such a system; this book shows us - both broadly and in minute detail - what it must have been like.
Soviets features unpublished drawings from the archive of Danzig Baldaev. Made in secret, they satirize the Communist Party system and expose the absurdities of Soviet life.…
This beautifully produced boxed set of 53 postcards contains stunning images from the bestselling Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia series of books. These hugely popular and influential books document the Russian criminal tattoo, revealing its hidden meanings. The motifs depicted represent the uncensored lives of the criminal classes, whose tattoos were a secret tribal language, a method of showing status within the prison system. By turn they are extraordinary, artful, explicit and sometimes just strange, reflecting as they do the lives and traditions of this previously hidden world. The box features 25 original sheet drawings by Danzig Baldaev and 25 photographs by Sergei Vasiliev. Each has a detailed description of the meaning of each tattoo on the reverse. Also included is a postcard of each of the three book covers. The drawings printed on the postcards are facsimiles of Baldaev's original sheets, reproduced directly from the Russian Criminal Tattoo Archive. Previously unpublished in this form.
This beautifully produced boxed set of 53 postcards contains stunning images from the bestselling Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia series of books. These hugely popular and…
This second volume of the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia is an essential companion to the critically acclaimed first volume. It features previously unpublished drawings and photographs from the extraordinary archives of Danzig Baldaev and Sergei Vasiliev.
During his lifetime as a guard in St Petersburg's notorious Kresty Prison, Baldaev diligently recorded over three thousand criminals' tattoos and their coded meanings. His drawings form a unique gallery; a passport into a hidden world of shovel-faced politicians, skeletons pushing wheelbarrows, salami-wielding prostitutes, fornicating devils, messages tangled in barbed wire and monkeys in uniform. Tattoos on hands, feet, legs, torsos, foreheads, eyelids, buttocks and genitals all take their place in this fascinating document of a rapidly disappearing criminal society, where history, status and even sexual preference are indelibly etched on the body.
With an introduction by Anne Applebaum, winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Gulag: A History. time and what a vast difference it all made for Louise Brooks, Cora Carlisle, and others like them.
This second volume of the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia is an essential companion to the critically acclaimed first volume. It features previously unpublished drawings and…
The photographs, drawings and texts published in this book are part of a collection of more than 3000 tattoos accumulated over a lifetime by prison attendant Danzig Baldaev. Tattoos were his gateway into a secret world in which he acted as ethnographer, recording the rituals of a closed society. The icons and tribal languages he documented are artful, distasteful, sexually explicit and sometimes just strange, reflecting as they do the lives and traditions of Russian convicts. Skulls, swastikas, harems of naked women, a smiling Al Capone, medieval knights in armour, daggers sheathed in blood, benign images of Christ, sweet-faced mothers and their babies, armies of tanks, and a horned Lenin these are the signs by which the people of this hidden world mark and identify themselves.
The photographs, drawings and texts published in this book are part of a collection of more than 3000 tattoos accumulated over a lifetime by prison attendant Danzig Baldaev.…
This is the final volume of drawings and photographs from Danzig Baldaev and Sergei Vasiliev, which completes the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia trilogy.
Danzig Baldaev documented over three thousand tattoos during a lifetime working as a prison guard. His recording of this esoteric world was reported to the KGB who unexpectedly supported him, realising the importance of being able to establish facts about convicts by reading the images on their bodies. The motifs depicted represent the uncensored lives of the criminal classes, ranging from violence and pornography to politics and alcohol. A medieval knight is surrounded by the severed heads of his enemies, a naked woman simultaneously services a man and two dwarfs, a crying President Gorbachev grips a human bone between sabre-like fangs, a host of angels drink vodka with God on a cloud. The illustrated criminals of Russia tell the tale of their closed society.
With an introduction by historian Alexander Sidorov, exploring the origin of Russian criminal tattoos and their meaning today.
This is the final volume of drawings and photographs from Danzig Baldaev and Sergei Vasiliev, which completes the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia trilogy.
Danzig Baldaev…
DRAWINGS FROM THE GULAG consists of 130 drawings by Danzig Baldaev (author of the acclaimed Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia series), describing the history, horror and peculiarities of the Gulag system from its inception in 1918. Baldaev's father, a respected ethnographer, taught him techniques to record the tattoos of criminals in St. Petersburg's notorious Kresty prison, where Danzig worked as a guard. He was reported to the K.G.B. who unexpectedly offered support for his work, allowing him the opportunity to travel across the former U.S.S.R. Witnessing scenes of everyday life in the Gulag, he chronicled this previously closed world from both sides of the wire. With every vignette, Baldaev brings the characters he depicts to vivid life: from the lowest "zek" (inmate) to the most violent tattooed "vor" (thief), all the practices and inhabitants of the Gulag system are depicted here in incredible and often shocking detail. In documenting the attitude of the authorities to those imprisoned, and the transformation of these citizens into survivors or victims of the Gulag system, this graphic novel vividly depicts methods of torture and mass murder undertaken by the administration, as well as the atrocities committed by criminals upon their fellow inmates.
DRAWINGS FROM THE GULAG consists of 130 drawings by Danzig Baldaev (author of the acclaimed Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia series), describing the history, horror and…
