“What’s interesting for me is to witness what remains after the progress has ground to a halt.”
—Danila Tkachenko
Over three winters between 2013 and 2015, Danila Tkachenko journeyed into the snowy depth of Russia, Bulgaria and Kazakhstan, covering more than 15,000 miles to photograph the remains of 33 abandoned Soviet ventures. Restricted Areas takes its name from the ‘secret cities’ the USSR established for sensitive military projects. These ‘cities’ were top secret locations, closed to all outsiders and often not appearing in public records or on maps. Adopting a minimalist aesthetic and presenting these Cold War ruins against the bleak white backdrop of winter, Tkachenko creates surreal images left over from another time and place. The present lot portrays the House-Monument of the Bulgarian Communist Party, erected during the late 1970s in honour of the founder of Bulgarian socialism, Dimitar Blagoev. Shaped like a saucer and formed of concrete, the mysterious structure emerges like a mirage from the snowscape.
Tkachenko is a visual artist working in the field of documentary photography. In 2015, he was awarded Burn Magazine's Emerging Photography Fund and was selected for Foam Talent for this body of work. He also received the European Publishers Award for Photography, which led to the series being exhibited at the Rencontres d'Arles in 2016. Other works from the series are in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and SpallArt.
