French Photographer Jason Guilbeau Outsmarted Lockdown To Find The Former USSR’s Strangest Street Relics
French photographer Jason Guilbeau has used Google Street View to virtually navigate Russia and the former USSR, searching for examples of a forgotten Soviet empire.
From remote rural roadsides to densely populated cities, the photographs reveal traces of history in plain sight: a Brutalist hammer and sickle stands in a remote field; a jet fighter is anchored to the ground by its concrete exhaust plume; a skeletal tractor sits on a cast-iron platform; a village sign resembles a Constructivist sculpture. Passers by seem oblivious to these objects.
This collection of photographs portrays a surreal reality: it is a document of a vanishing era, captured by an omniscient technology that is continually deleting and replenishing itself – an inadvertent definition of Russia today.
More: Jason Guilbeau, Instagram, Book h/t: guardian
From remote rural roadsides to densely populated cities, the photographs reveal traces of history in plain sight: a brutalist hammer and sickle stands in a remote field; a jet fighter is anchored to the ground by its concrete exhaust plume; a skeletal tractor sits on a cast-iron platform. Passers-by seem oblivious to these objects
