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Soviet Signs and Street Relics by Jason Guilbeau
Poignant reminders of an optimistic Soviet past in Google-derived images
(Left to right, from top) Zernograd, Russia; Vasylkiv, Ukraine; Jalal-Abad, Kyrgyzstan; Vorkuta, Russia; Novovorontsovka, Ukraine; Yakovlev fighter plane in Novosibirsk, Russia; Vorkuta, Russia; Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Ukraine and Shatki n/Nizhny Novgorod

WHILE “travelling” across the former territories of the Soviet Union by using Google Street View, photographer Jason Guilbeau zeroed in on images that fired his imagination.

He then stripped them of their navigational markers to eliminate visual interference and has come up with a mode of “travel” in which the sensorial experience of smells, weather, tactile sensations and sounds, including that of human voice, are absent.

But does it matter? Evidently not to Guilbeau, who seems unconcerned by the distance in both time and space to the subjects invoking his curiosity.

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