Soviet Signs & Street Relics

Jason Guilbeau, FUEL, Damon Murray , Stephen Sorell

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Hardback

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English

Abrams
12 August 2020

Photographs: collections; History

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. The subjects of these unlikely photographs are incidental to the purpose of Google Street View - captured by serendipity, rather than design, they are accorded a common vernacular. Once found, he strips the images of their practical use by removing the navigational markers, transforming them to his own vision.

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; an village sign resembles a Constructivist sculpture. Passers by seem oblivious to these objects. Relinquished by the present they have become part of the composition of everyday life, too distant in time and too ubiquitous in nature to be recorded by anything other than an indiscriminate automaton.

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.

By: Jason Guilbeau, FUEL
Introduction by: Clem Cecil
Edited by: Damon Murray, Stephen Sorell
Imprint: Abrams
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 200mm, Width: 160mm,
Weight: 620g
ISBN: 9781916218406
ISBN 10: 1916218407
Pages: 192
Publication Date: 12 August 2020
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Jason Guilbeau is a photographer who lives and works in Strasbourg. Damon Murray and Stephen Sorrell have been publishing books on Soviet culture since 2004 from the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia to Soviet Bus Stops. Clem Cecil is a Russian-speaking specialist in language, literature and architectural preservation, with many years' experience working in Russia, initially as correspondent for The Times, then as co-founder of the Moscow Architecture Preservation Society.

Reviews for Soviet Signs & Street Relics

Soviet Signs and Street Relics brings together Guilbeau's shots of fading roadside signs and decorative monuments, many featuring the symbolic hammer and sickle....all form a striking reference to the history of their surroundings.--Belle Hutton AnOther