#23 from 'Restricted Areas' serie

View View in room
(4/6) + 1 A.P.
2013
Материалы: Цифровая печать на архивной бумаге
72 sm x 90 sm
Category: photography
Item Number: 002297
240 000 / 2 400 €
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About the Work
About the Artist

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 was born in Moscow in 1989. In 2014 he graduated from the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia, department of documentary photography. In the same year he became the winner of the World Press Photo 2014 competition with the project “Escape” which he worked on for 3 years. In 2015 he finished the project “Restricted Areas” which has received a number of international awards including European Publishers Award For Photography, Burn Magazine grant, and included in the Dutch magazine Foam Talents. In 2016 completed series “Lost Horizon”, in 2017 published projects “Motherland” and “Monuments” which have caused a wide public response. In 2018 by the invitation of Qatar Museums Danila realized the series “Oasis”. In 2019 completed series “Heroes” and “Acid”. Tkachenko’s photos were published in such magazines as BBC Culture, The Guardian, IMA Magazine, GUP Magazine, British Journal of Photography, National Geographic.