Danila Tkachenko

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.

 

 

 

Bio

Danila Tkachenko (b. 1989) is a visual artist working with documentary photography.
In 2010 graduated from the Moscow school of photojournalism Izvestia. Was invited to work as press photographer to the newspaper “Evening Moscow”. In 2011 entered the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia. While studying there he realised the need to work exclusively on the artistic photo projects. In these projects he is talking on the topic of looking for one?s identity in the contemporary society. In 2013 finalised the project Escape about the people who became disillusioned about the contemporary society and decided to live alone far from the civilisation. Project has received recognition through positive reviews of leading printed issues and largest photography awards, including World Press Photo. In 2015 finished working on the series Restricted Areas.

 

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Danila Tkachenko