Danila Tkachenko is a Russian photographer whose series Restricted Areas crystallises the tendencies of many artists working on themes of the post-Soviet space. As Calvert 22’s Power and Architecture season demonstrates, there is a healthy interest in the abandoned or neglected buildings that once served as landmarks of Soviet ambition: the rack and ruin of utopia. What sets Tkachenko apart is the unforgiving simplicity of his compositions......Continue Reading

Tkachenko's "Restricted Areas" focuses on 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,'' says Tkachenko.

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.

Danila Tkachenko travels 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. Tkachenko's interest is shaped by what is left after.

Part of an unfinished space port

Antenna for interception of signals

Stages of the space rockets

Excavator on a closed quarry

All images © Danila Tkachenko

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