Ghosts of Progress: The Photography of Danila Tkachenko

In the cold war years, the Soviet Union strived to develop a range of world beating technologies that would show the rest of us they meant business. Serious business. The space race was over and the threat of World War 3 loomed over the earth. Behind the Iron Curtain, The Russians worked away in secrecy on countless covert projects - The Dead Hand System, open air small pox tests at Vozrozhdeniya Island and the development of hundreds of secret cities across the country. The Soviets, desperate to prove they were the world's number one super power, created a military advancement program that would end abruptly with the collapse Soviet Union. These projects and the evidence of them were abandoned and left to decay in the snowy wastelands.

Danila Tkachenko's project 'Restricted Areas' captures the forlorn majesty of these gargantuan relics beautifully, juxtaposing humanity's utopian strive for technological progress with a bleak and almost post-apocalyptic landscape. As a photographer with an interest in Russia's secret history, I am in awe of Danila's photographs.

"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. "

- Danila Tkachenko: http://www.danilatkachenko.com 

Deserted observatory located in the area with the best conditions for space observations

Airplane – amphibia with vertical take-off VVA14. The USSR built only two of them in 1976, one of which has crashed during transportation.

Former residential buildings in a deserted polar scientific town specialised on biological research.

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

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.

Memorial on a deserted nuclear power station.

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

All images Danila Tkachenko ©

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