Russian doll artist and photographer Lara Vychuzhanina takes Barbie and Ken out of their Malibu dream house and imagines them "back in the US, back in the US, back in the USSR."
Working with real photographs as a reference, Vychuzhanina manages to capture the style of the Soviet world in incredible detail. The delightfully nostalgic, 60 x 40 x 50cm (23.6 x 15.7 x 19.6 inch) model apartment features plastic pots, pans, and kitchen appliances that Vychuzhanina scuffed up to look as though they’re old and rusting. The meticulous artist even printed out scaled-downed food labels and stuck them onto tiny boxes and cans, and the table is laid out with a simple breakfast.
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Подумываю снять нечто похожее на эти фотографии, но в декорациях деревенского дома. Чтоб тоже был и мужик с водкой, и общая убогость убранства, в общем незамысловатый быт деревенского забулдыги. Конечно же с Гришей в главной роли)) Опять будете сетовать, что уж больно он цивильно выглядит для алкаша:))) . . #dollphotography #lara_v #photography_art #miniature #barbiedoll #toys #dollhouse #dollphotogallery #dollhouseminiatures #fineart #ussr #roombox #barbieworld #dollsofinstagram #communalapartment #kitchen #soviet #sovietkitchen #vodka #barbiemadetomove #ссср #коммуналка #коммунальнаяквартира #советскийсоюз #советскаякухня #алкаш #мужик #советскиймужик #водка #соседи
A post shared by LARA VYCHUZHANINA (@lara_art_dolls) on Nov 16, 2017 at 9:16pm PST
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Как и обещала - продолжение фоток с коммунальной кухни;) Гриша съел всю жареную картошку, выкурил всю Приму и теперь размышляет о смысле жизни)) . . #dollphotography #lara_v #photography_art #miniature #barbiedoll #toys #dollhouse #dollphotogallery #dollhouseminiatures #fineart #ussr #roombox #barbieworld #dollsofinstagram #communalapartment #kitchen #soviet #sovietkitchen #vodka #boozer #ссср #коммуналка #коммунальнаяквартира #советскийсоюз #советскаякухня #алкаш #мужик #советскиймужик #водка #соседи
A post shared by LARA VYCHUZHANINA (@lara_art_dolls) on Nov 14, 2017 at 7:32pm PST
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Christopher Herwig is a photographer who previously did a fantastic series of photos of Soviet-era bus stops.
Now he's back with a book of photos of Soviet subway stops -- and they are, if anything, even more mesmerizingly gorgeous. The USSR really went in for epic geometric patterns receding into the infinite distance. The book's available here, and his Instagram is here.
Some more photos of stops are below, but here's a bit from a Colossal post talking about how he got exposed to the subject:
Herwig explains that he became interested in the underground architecture of the stations while visiting Moscow and Tashkent. Because many of the metro stations were used as nuclear bomb shelters, they were considered military sites and photographing them was prohibited. “Although I likely could have gotten away with a few images I really wanted to do the series properly and cover all the cities in the former USSR with metro lines not just a few flashy ones in Moscow,” he told Colossal. “With restriction being lifted in many of the cities it meant I could have a go at it.”
Herwig’s images take viewers on a journey through the architectural and political influences of decades pasts. Soviet-era symbols, relief sculptures of significant events and figures, and displays of opulence cover every square meter of the well-maintained subterranean spaces. Often making early morning and late night trips into the stations, Herwig says that many of the otherwise busy hubs appear to be abandoned because of his goal to “use people with purpose and not to distract from the space and design of the stations.”
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Brutal Block Postcards is a new book that, er, celebrates the concrete landscape of the Soviet era. Over at
Collectors Weekly, Lisa Hix flips through the pages:
Many of these postcards, published by governments of the U.S.S.R. between the 1960s and 1980s, depict the bland, 1960s five-story concrete-paneled apartments known as “khrushchyovka” as if to say, “Look at the modern wonder of collective worker housing!” To Westerners, the boxy buildings telegraph the bleak authority of so-called poured-concrete “Brutalist” architecture, which was somehow popular with both democratic and totalitarian governments during the postwar years.
However, in Brutal Bloc Postcards, the images of stern rectilinear apartments, government offices, and hotels stand in stark contrast to the dramatic public monuments. These Cold War-era monuments are epic in scale, towering over the Soviet landscape; their angular, avant-garde forms convey movement, as if hurtling toward brighter future through Communism.
"Postcards From Big Brother" (Collectors Weekly)
Brutal Blog Postcards: Soviet Era Postcards from the Eastern Bloc (Amazon)
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