Born in Moscow in 1989, Danila Tkachenko is one of the most appreciated visual artists who works with documentary photography. His images are a look into a restricted Russia and into remote corners of the world – difficult to reach and be seen – made available through the artist’s technique, skills and courage. His photographs describe reality as it is, showing its crudest and cruelest face; revealing the hidden secrets of a state like Russia: rockets for space travel, diesel submarines, vertical take-off planes, military bases for nuclear tests and satellite dishes for interplanetary communications.
Restricted Areas
The project “Restricted Areas” is about the human impulse towards utopia, about our striving for perfection through technological progress.
Humans are always trying to own ever more than they have—this is the source of technical progress. The byproducts of this progress are various commodities as well as the tools of violence in order to hold power over others. Better, higher, stronger—these ideals often express the main ideology of governments. To achieve these standards, governments are ready to sacrifice almost everything. Meanwhile, the individual is supposed to become a tool for reaching these goals. In exchange, the individual is promised a higher level of comfort. For “Restricted Areas,” I traveled in search of places which used to hold great importance for the idea of technological progress. These places are now deserted. They have lost their significance, along with their utopian ideology which is now obsolete. Many of these places were once secret cities, that did not appear on any maps or public records. These places were the sites of 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 and it can happen for different reasons—nuclear war, economic crisis, natural disaster. What’s interesting for me is to witness what remains after the progress has ground to a halt.
Danila Tkachenko
