"Restricted Areas" by Danila Tkachenko

The project "Restricted Areas"- where it shows impressive figures of metal and concrete built under the Soviet Union that are now deserted in snowscapes- Danila Tkachenko is the winner of the twenty-second edition of the European Publishers Award for Photography (EPAP) 2015 , which promotes contemporary photography.

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

The project "Restricted Areas" by Danila Tkachenco is about 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.

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." said by Danila Tkachenko.

• Danila Tkachenko’s Restricted Access is at the 2015 Athens photo festival, 4-26 July.

The book containing this project will be published in autumn 2015 in five languages, and the official launch will be present at the Rencontres d'Arles during opening week of July.

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Former residential buildings in a deserted polar scientific town specialized on biological research. Photograph © Danila Tkachenko.

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. Photograph © Danila Tkachenko.

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.  Photograph © Danila Tkachenko.

City where rocket engines were being produced in Soviet times. Was a closed city until 1992.  Photograph © Danila Tkachenko.

Water contamination test at the lake around the previously closed scientific city Chelyabinsk-40. In 1964 there was the first nuclear catastrophe, one of the largest in history and equal in scale to Chernobyl, but it stayed secret. The city is surrounded by the lakes which are until now contaminated with radiation. Photograph © Danila Tkachenko.

The world's largest diesel submarine. Photograph © Danila Tkachenko.

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. Photograph © Danila Tkachenko.

Secret city Chelyabinsk-40, which was not marked on the maps until 1994. The first Soviet nuclear bomb was created there.It stayed secret thanks to the fact that wind was blowing east. It is still impossible to enter the city unless one has special permission or relatives living there. Photograph © Danila Tkachenko.

Sarcophagus over a closed shaft which is 4 km deep – was one of the deepest scientific shafts in the world at the time. Photograph © Danila Tkachenko.

Water intake. Photograph © Danila Tkachenko.

Memorial on a deserted nuclear station.  Photograph © Danila Tkachenko.

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More information

Danila Tkachenko

Danila Tkachenko is a visual artist working with documentary photography who was born in 1989 in Moscow, Russia. He studied documentary photography in The Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia. The main theme of his work is the identity. In the debut project “Transitional Age" he is interested in the transformation of a teenager’s identity – a child becomes an adult. In his following project "Escape" the focus shifts to the opposition of the individual and society. Danila researches the experience of hermits – people who live through decades alone with nature –and tries to find the answer for the critical questions and see what happens to personality when it loses its "social mask." His recent project "Restricted Areas" is reflecting on the identity of a civilisation and its relations with technological advances. Deserted places that were once sites of national importance, buildings and machinery which are now relics of the past are photographed in a vacuum white space of eternal winter.

His work has been exhibited and published in galleries in Moscow, St-Petersburg, Frankfurt, Berlin, Bratislava, Enschede (the Netherlands) and New york, and publications in "The Washington Post" or "Fotografia Magazine". He has won prizes as the "LensCulture Exposure Awards" or "30 under 30, Magnum photos", among others.

Published on: June 13, 2015

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