The Dilapidated City. First results of project

For more than a year I have been working on a documentary project called “Dilapidated City”, in which I photograph old dilapidated houses. First of all, all those houses and buildings that were subject to resettlement and demolition were re-shot. Then I began to take pictures for the future: many houses are still not recognized as dilapidated and emergency, but they have all the signs to be called. Now I am trying to capture the wooden barracks of various types and conditions that were built in the post-war period and are designed to live in them for no more than 20-30 years.

The city of Veliky Ustyug for a long time was wooden, endured frequent fires. There was a time when the city was almost completely burned out and then Catherine II decided to develop a new city plan. To this day, wooden buildings occupy most of the city, and occasionally burn, rot and collapse. Unfortunately, nothing is being built in return, so you have to “catch” that wooden image of the city, which will never be the same.

The results are already there and they are far from positive for this project - over the past couple of years, for various reasons, more than two dozen wooden apartment buildings have disappeared for various reasons. I drove around the city and selectively captured the wastelands from the same points that were once photographed at home.

Crossroad of Pushkin Street and Soviet Avenue. It is strange why they did not demolish the house on the left, because it is as old and abandoned as it was on the right.
December 2017 – December 2018

Wasteland at the intersection of Pushkin and Red. Across the street is the hostel of the Pedagogical College.
February 2013 – December 2018

In this case, on the site of a waste land built shop "Magnet". 2011–2018

At the corner of Kopylov Street and Zasodimsky Lane, a residential building was demolished in spring 2018.
The released territory was seized by a correctional colony. 2017–2018

And on the place of a dilapidated barrack on Gledenskaya street in the Yaikovo microdistrict a car parking was formed.
February 2018 – December 2018

If the house on 35 Vodnikov Street was demolished very quickly, then the neighboring one was left in an abandoned form for a very long time. 2011–2018

And here is the neighboring house on 23 Engels Street. The first photo was taken in 2011, and it was disassembled in the spring of 2018. All this time, people threw garbage in open windows. Garbage has accumulated so much that he began to fall out back. It is good that this house was dismantled and the garbage bin disappeared, but as an architectural element the house disappeared from the city map.

The residential building on Red Street burned down in 2016, being already abandoned. A local entrepreneur promised to build a similar house at this place with the preservation of design elements. 2011–2018

On Soviet Avenue, 185, they acted strangely and, possibly, illegally - first they hung a sign on the house with a QR code and a brief description that it was an architectural monument, and then they were demolished. 2011–2018

At the intersection of Shilov and Uglovskogo streets, everything is simple: they bought a private house and built a cottage with an animal store. 2011–2018

In the depths of the courtyard on Lunacharsky Street it is even simpler: the apartment building was recognized as dilapidated, subject to resettlement and demolition. The federal program is completed.
November 2017 – December 2018

These are just a few examples of how the wooden look disappears and what appears instead. Unfortunately, there is an era of plastic and metal profiles - the tree is now not relevant building material. And now the era of the most tasteless and terrible architectural style.

The project continues!