Interesting that this trend is present in the works of many artists from the post communist block , not just photographers.
You will notice this trend in music, film, literature, painting, even comedy.
Foreigners might find these trends in arts a bit strange and dark, but for us it is the way life has been and probably will be.
This is also felt in the mentality of people - the future is uncertain and all our efforts to build a better society (life for ourselves) in the future may end up the same as before - decay and abandon.
Looking at all the new incredible buildings recently built in places like Dubai, Emirates, China and so on, I can't help but remember these ruins of the once mighty empire of the people for the people, wondering - how will they look 100 years from now ?
What I really like, and possible the West, is that in the East we can see ruins of a world where 'poetry' and utopy had a possibility of exist outside books. In the western/democratic world everything must be economically rational (give profit) to exist.
I love the beauty in the ruins in Detroit and the USSR and the Urban Exploration photos from all over.
Russia or rather the USSR made lots of fantastic BIG buildings and because they were part of the planned economy they weren't actually required. So you have big buildings turning into ruins like nowhere else on earth. You might as well talk about the exploitation of pictures of penguins. They are unique and fantastic (the Soviet buildints not the penguins) and so worthy of photography .
"The US National Security Agency (NSA) built one of its largest listening stations atop the hill, rumored to be part of the global ECHELON intelligence gathering network. "The Hill", as it was known colloquially by the many American soldiers who worked there around the clock and who commuted there from their quarters in the American Sector, was located in the British Sector. In July 1961, Mobile Allied listening units began operations on Teufelsberg,[4][7] having surveyed various other locales throughout West Berlin in a search for the best vantage point for listening to Soviet, East German, and other Warsaw Pact nations military traffic."
"In the 1990s, as Berlin experienced an economic boom after German reunification, a group of investors bought the former listening station area from the City of Berlin with the intention to build hotels and apartments." (for less than 3 million USD(!) - Ed.) "There was talk of preserving the listening station as a spy museum. Berlin's building boom produced a glut of buildings, however, and the Teufelsberg project became unprofitable. As of the early 2000s, there has been talk of the city buying back the hill. However, this is unlikely, as the area is encumbered with a mortgage of nearly 50 million dollars."
"Once again, therefore, Russia and eastern Europe serves as an imaginary space in which western nations can play out their own crises of identity, without having to confront them directly."
Great quote. After having lived in East Europe for some years this completely matches my experience.
How much of this is driven by the the stories of dystopian futures mostly coming out of the West during the Cold War? The Soviet architecture for the most part had been portrayed as brutal and without feeling, similar to the huge Nazi works of WW2. Yet there is a lot of beautiful construction in these areas, we just couldn't relate to the lifestyles portrayed of those who lived there.
The depiction of decay, of ruin, of wet cold abandon (ex: http://micleusanu.blogspot.com/).
Foreigners might find these trends in arts a bit strange and dark, but for us it is the way life has been and probably will be.
This is also felt in the mentality of people - the future is uncertain and all our efforts to build a better society (life for ourselves) in the future may end up the same as before - decay and abandon.
Looking at all the new incredible buildings recently built in places like Dubai, Emirates, China and so on, I can't help but remember these ruins of the once mighty empire of the people for the people, wondering - how will they look 100 years from now ?