WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Sad glimpses of an era gone by
Bleak documentation of the remnants of the Soviet period is made soulless by an absence of human beings, writes JOHN GREEN
(L to R) Worker and Kolkhoz Woman sculpture by Vera Mukhina, 1937, Moscow; abandoned office for the construction of the Nadezhda (Hope) factory in Norilsk, Russia; Shaybale housing estate, built in 1974, Novokuznetsk Russia Built in 1974
[Arseniy Kotov] 
JAMES CROSSLEY applauds a lucid biography of the German radical preacher who reemerged as a hero in the GDR
Prizes all round: the Bard hands plaudits to the Miners Gala, OT&JC, Joe Solo, Black Sabbath’s frontman and the Lionesses
Star cartoonist JAMIE BRITTON is in awe of a graphic novel of epic proportions that explores class, religion and globalisation via the strange cultivation of Ginseng in the US Midwest
GUILLERMO THOMAS is intrigued by a history of the Middle East that demonstrates how promising post colonial beginnings were snuffed out by Western imperialist interests
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
Soviet Seasons
By Arseniy Kotov
Fuel Design & Publishing
£24.34
THIS is the follow-up volume to Kotov’s debut Soviet Cities. It is an odd collection of photos, all in colour, featuring Soviet-era urban landscapes of housing estates and industrial sites, interspersed with murals, mosaics and monumental sculptures, many in a state of semi-dereliction. He covers four areas of the post-Soviet republics – Siberia, Ukraine, European Russia and the Caucasus.
Each area is separated incongruously by season, but you would be hard-put to guess in which season any one of the photographs was taken, as they are all drained of real colour, mostly sepia-toned, taken at dusk, night-time or under grey skies. The viewer is confronted with almost identical images of densely packed, faceless housing blocks, seemingly dumped into the landscapes.
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