The air quality is still horrific but I had to force myself out a bit to market myself around some fashion brands in the city. I have certainly missed getting out and just exploring, placing one step ahead of the other with little direction in mind. I headed over to the general area of the place I wanted to hand over a business card to and talk to in person, to which a series of older buildings and areas came into view. It felt dated. It felt very Soviet. But the Soviet Union era that came before the modernism. The traditional, more Roman looking buildings and factories that spoke of a completely different, industrial era. I'll write about those watch and clock factories at some point in the future. But I wanted to set the atmosphere a bit more. Decayed, Roman looking architecture, and the Socialist dream.
I've been trying to find small businesses here to reach out to and discuss potential shoots with, trying to find some that would be interested in essentially giving me a chance to work on my portfolio a bit more and advertise myself. I have been finding these places on Instagram, to which I assumed it would generally be easy to just contact them directly through that, not realising that Instagram is a massive pile of shit these days and buries your messages even to businesses. So with that down the drain, these explorations around the city seem to be the best direction: head to the place, meet them in person, and awkwardly attempt to offer them a free service they probably don't want in the first place. Not a fun feeling. But hey, getting outdoors again felt good.
On my way there I crossed an abandoned Soviet school I had previously seen. The sign of it now destroyed with a gate placed over the entrance to block it. I felt sad seeing this. Knowing it lived on very borrowed time. Scattered around were signs of the past. The old Soviet texts that displayed sensitive information: people's names. Their bonuses. Even books scattered around the outside that spoke of chemicals and how to use them. I found one in such good condition that I picked it up and placed it in my backpack. These books and papers were destined to be destroyed within days, now out in the elements. Ready to rot and cease to exist as if these moments never took place at all. I'm not sure how these papers ended up at an abandoned school, and my curiosity of what remains inside is stronger than ever as a result of these papers. Speaking on laboratory work taking pace back in the 1980s. Little did these people know that a few short years later their entire lives would change.
It's strange stumbling across such items of the past. Different to the following images that display the architectural creativity that came from the era. Connecting these papers to the surroundings I walked through felt even more odd. For once I had seen something from the past that felt deeply human. Not just the concrete jungle. Not just the mechanical chaos of rundown vehicles that sit within the courtyards. Pieces of paper with people's names on. They must've lived nearby, too. As I walked, I thought of what happened to those people. They'd certainly be in their later years by now. I thought of how much longer the remaining history had until that too would be cast aside and forgotten, left to the elements or simply destroyed. It really put time into question for me. A bit of an existential anxiety that came with a sadness knowing how quick time passes but how much faster things around us change as we see it.
The hammering and drilling of construction sights around added to the feeling. Walking throughout the streets and seeing the architectural shift. The ways in which even old buildings had changed and had much of their appearances altered to match the present interests of corporations. This sadness lingered on within as I roamed around, particularly once I reached the factories. Seeing their beautiful fences now decayed and broken, forgotten and left as dumping grounds. I again thought of how these places once were in their better days. On one side the new apartment high rises and on the other the signs of a lost civilisation. I looked at these windows on an apartment building that must've been constructed in the 1970s, admiring the colourful glass in its stairway, imagining how the light of a strong summer's day might enter through it. Again, taking note of the current state it remained in.
Even despite that state it was in, I saw the beauty in it. The concept it held. I wanted to photograph it more, and in different ways, but I could tell that my reason to be here was already being altered. Forgetting about the business cards, forgetting about the portfolio. Forgetting about the creative side of photography and more captivated by the journalistic side of it. To want to keep capturing the landscape around me, the very evident changing times even during the USSR as the architectural ideology shifted. From your usual commie blocks to strange glass shapes in the windows. To rounded balconies and high rises.
And yet I remained in the courtyards on the way home. Looking at the old cars coated in layers of dust from the trees. Coated in the browning dead leaves that had fallen from above. Their tyres deflated. Stood idle next to cracking walls beneath a grey cloud from the sadness of polluted sky and winter.
