Restricted Areas

Relics of a Utopia

Danila Tkachenko

Danila Tkachenko’s project Restricted Areas is about the human impulse toward utopia, about our striving for perfection through technological progress. We’re always trying to own more than we have – it is the principal catalyst for progress.
For Restricted Areas, Danila Tkachenko travelled thousands of kilometres in search of places that used to hold great importance for technological progress in the former Soviet Union – places that are now deserted and have lost their significance, along with their once-utopian, now obsolete ideology. Many of these places were once secret cities that did not appear on any maps or public records. These places are the sites of forgotten scientific triumphs, nuclear catastrophes that were kept secret for decades, abandoned buildings of almost inhuman complexity.
Any progress comes to its end sooner or later, and it can happen for different reasons – nuclear war, economic crisis, natural disasters. These photographs bear witness to what remains after the progress has ground to a halt.