Danila Tkachenko is a 26-year-old multiply awarded visual artist from Russia, working with documentary photography. The project featured here, “Restricted Areas“ has been honoured with the 2015 European Publishers Award for Photography, depicting frozen images of ghost and secret towns, invisible in maps, factories and machines, mining fields and military bases.
In Danila`s words:
The project “Restricted Areas” is about utopian strive of humans for technological progress. Humans are always trying to own ever more than they have – this is the source of technical progress, which was the means to create various commodities, standards, as well as the tools of violence in order to keep the power over others.
Better, higher, stronger – these ideals often express the main ideology of the governments, for these goals they are ready to sacrifice almost everything. While the individual is supposed to become a tool for reaching the set goals, and receive in exchange the higher level of comfort.
I travel in search of places which used to have great importance for the technical progress – and which are now deserted. Those places lost their significance together with the utopian ideology which is now obsolete. Secret cities that cannot be found on maps, forgotten scientific triumphs, abandoned buildings of almost inhuman complexity. The perfect technocratic future that never came.
Any progress comes to its end earlier or later, it can happen due to different reasons – nuclear war, economic crisis or natural disaster.. For me it`s interesting to witness what is left after.
Cover photo: Headquarters of the Communist Party
MEMORIAL ON A DESERTED NUCLEAR STATION (C) DANILA TKACHENKO
“BULGARIA” SHIP LIFTED FROM UNDERWATER, 122 PEOPLE DROWNED ON IT (C) DANILA TKACHENKO
MONUMENT TO THE CONQUERORS OF SPACE. THE ROCKET ON TOP WAS MADE ACCORDING TO THE DESIGN OF GERMAN V-2 MISSILE (C) DANILA TKACHENKO
PART OF AN UNFINISHED SPACE PORT (C) DANILA TKACHENKO
DESERTED OBSERVATORY LOCATED IN THE AREA WITH THE BEST CONDITIONS FOR SPACE OBSERVATIONS (C) DANILA TKACHENKO
GROUND STATION FOR SPACECRAFT CONTROL (C) DANILA TKACHENKO
EXCAVATOR ON A CLOSED QUARRY (C) DANILA TKACHENKO
SARCOPHAGUS OVER A CLOSED SHAFT WHICH IS 4 KM DEEP ? WAS ONE OF THE DEEPEST SCIENTIFIC SHAFTS IN THE WORLD AT THE TIME (C) DANILA TKACHENKO
BOILER HOUSE OF A CLOSED AERODROME (C) DANILA TKACHENKO
STAGES OF THE SPACE ROCKETS (C) DANILA TKACHENKO
ANTENNA BUILT FOR INTERPLANETARY CONNECTION. THE SOVIET UNION WAS PLANNING TO BUILD BASES ON OTHER PLANETS, AND PREPARED FACILITIES FOR CONNECTION WHICH WERE NEVER USED AND ARE DESERTED NOW (C) DANILA TKACHENKO
THE WORLD`S LARGEST DIESEL SUBMARINE (C) DANILA TKACHENKO
FORMER MILITARY BASE ON THE ISLAND, WITH AN UNDERGROUND BUNKER (C) DANILA TKACHENKO
DESERTED OBSERVATORY (C) DANILA TKACHENKO
CITY WHERE ROCKET ENGINES WERE BEING PRODUCED IN SOVIET TIMES. WAS A CLOSED CITY UNTIL 1992 (C) DANILA TKACHENKO
FORMER MINING TOWN WHICH HAS BEEN CLOSED AND MADE A BOMBING TRIAL FIELD. THE BUILDING ON THE PHOTO SHOWS THE CULTURAL CENTER, ONE OF THE OBJECTS FOR BOMBING (C) DANILA TKACHENKO
TROPOSPHERIC ANTENNA IN THE NORTH OF RUSSIA ? THE TYPE OF CONNECTION WHICH HAS BECOME OBSOLETE. THERE WERE MANY OF THEM BUILT IN FAR NORTH, ALL OF THEM DESERTED AT THE MOMENT. (C) DANILA TKACHENKO
FORMER RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS IN A DESERTED POLAR SCIENTIFIC TOWN SPECIALISED ON BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH. (C) DANILA TKACHENKO
AIRPLANE ? AMPHIBIA WITH VERTICAL TAKE-OFF VVA14. THE USSR BUILT ONLY TWO OF THEM IN 1976, ONE OF WHICH HAS CRASHED DURING TRANSPORTATION (C) DANILA TKACHENKOREAD ALSO: SEE THE 1940's NEW YORK CITY THROUGH THE LENS OF A 17-YEAR-OLD STANLEY KUBRICK