You don’t need to be a professional traveler to discover an unwanted and forgotten piece of land. There are thousands of such places throughout Russia. This No Man’s Land has long been abandoned by great history and culture. Dark eye sockets of abandoned houses, weathered black skeletons of burnt huts, a garbage pattern covered with a layer of soil, and the overwhelming indifference of a few local residents. In such a simple and unpretentious way, villages and entire cities are now dying. The connection of generations with the land of their Motherland is being broken, and the true meaning of the word «Patriot» is finally distorted. It is enough to step on No Man’s Land at least once, and you will forever remember how to not love your country.
The territories annexed to our country during the Second World War also could not escape the ailment of ownerlessness: Karelia, Ladoga, Vyborg, Kaliningrad region. Whole regions were abandoned by people who knew and honored the history of these places, kept traditions and the memory of their ancestors. Torn away from their creators, cities and lands have changed their appearance over time. New people began to build life from scratch among unusual and bizarre decorations, and new faceless buildings of the same type gradually surrounded the historical centers. Someone moved to the newly acquired territories, saving their lives from starvation, some were looking for a better life, there were also shock workers. The new owners did not understand the full value of the acquired architectural ensembles, could not fall in love with the primordial nature of the surrounding nature, did not try to understand the depth of cultural layers in the taken away territories. At this very moment, the vile leprosy creeping fungus began to absorb the history of the place and the traces of any civilization. Today we can observe the result of a serious illness.
Our No Man’s Land is like a dusty box full of completely useless things. The one that everyone has in the darkest corner of the closet or garage. Suddenly it will come in handy. Sometimes you even look inside with interest, but the thick layer of oily dust is so disgusting that you put the box back until the next bout of nostalgia. From these forgotten boxes, one could make another full-fledged country with its own alternative history.
My series of images is an attempt to capture the No Man’s Land phenomenon. This is an observation of the structure of life on the territory of a completely new and unusual state.
