Italian photographer Eric Lusito visited and photographed abandoned Cold War Soviet Union military bases. It is strange for a child of the Cold War to see in my own lifetime such a change in world fortunes and tensions. A welcome sight. For more information, see the link at the bottom. Each has a description in the full article, including air bases, early radar warning sites, missiles sites, a tracking station for Sputnik, and a base in Mongolia that once created a city of over 300,000 where fewer than 30,000 live now.
“These sites of power… are mostly doomed to disappear in the course of time.”
Like an archaeologist entering the ancient tombs of pharaohs for the first time. That’s how Italian photographer Eric Lusito describes visiting these abandoned Soviet military sites; places that have been brought to ruin, but which remain – and contain – fascinating relics of their now-collapsed empire. “I had the feeling of discovering a new world,” Lusito tells us. “But one that was already starting to disappear.” Even the Cyrillic alphabet appeared to him like ancient hieroglyphs, before he had any clue about how to decipher it.
Yet, language aside, it was Lusito’s intention that his pictures spark people’s imagination. “The ruins and images have the power to let everyone build their own stories,” he says. These haunting photographs, which have so brilliantly captured the crumbling shells of buildings against their stark landscapes, are certainly evocative enough to make us wonder about the people who inhabited them. Wonder – and then some.
Read more at http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/news-haunting-photographs-abandoned-soviet-military-bases-0?image=0#6hsvVM48LCEvrDuL.99
Michael Bradley - Time Traveler 