Soviet bus stops

Christopher Herwig has documented the weirdly imaginative and bold monuments that are Soviet-era bus stops. They look forgotten, and a little at odds with their desert-like surroundings, like an actor missing an audience.

Also worth a look are his pictures of the Aral Sea.

Fat fingers in pies

Around the country there are buildings that lie unused, forgotten by bureaucracy, condemned and wasted. The government is considering making living in these buildings a crime. I think that's a bit rubbish of them.

At the moment squatting an empty commercial property is not illegal, it's a civil dispute between the owner and the squatter.  The process of evicting squatters is unfairly tied up in tape and could certainly be made easier for the owners.  A court order is currently needed to remove them, which is an expensive and lengthly hassle, and i'm uncomfortable with the fact that the owners have have to foot the legal bills of the squatters (although these are bills that the state would have to foot were it to become criminal). However, sometimes these buildings are so neglected it's years before the owner even realises they are being squatted, and when they do, they find it's been looked after, unharmed and shielded from vandals.

Tales of those who quietly repair a property, pay bills, organise workshops and events that bring together the local community, these tales are not so commonly heard.  It's the stories of people who wreck buildings, or sneak in whilst someone's on holiday and squat their home, that reach the press and instill fear in the public. Yet most squatters are not doing this.  

With an estimated 762,000 empty and abandoned properties in the UK, and homelessness expected to increase as the cuts in housing allowances take effect, it seems like a crime to have long forgotten buildings sitting empty. It's inevitable that desperate people are going to try and make use of them. Is it really just to make occupying such a building a criminal offence? 

Go visit a squat, government.  

Read more here
Resist the criminalisation of squatting

Last of the brooding buildings

Shanghai is bulging at the seams with all the humanity living there, and as the city modernises to accommodate it, so the spidery arm of the wrecking ball spreads.  Older buildings and neighbourhoods are being steadily demolished to make way for its steely young towers.

Photographer Greg Girard has taken some ghostly shots of these ramshackle buildings.  They lumber stoically in the foreground of glittering skyscrapers.  It's easy to personify them against that background of a thousand identical skyscraper windows and feel a tug of sympathy.  Lonely houses surrounded by a bulldozed wasteland, they look exiled.  Sitting firm in the face of their fate like old men, all weary and spent.  Just waiting to go.

Girard has some interesting pictures of what life was like in the dark depths of the Kowloon Walled city too. Go check out his website

As some background, Shanghai has a population estimated at 23 million, making it the largest city populace in the world.  It's grown to this size as a result of people migrating in to the city, as it's natural population growth rate has, since 1993, been negative due to low fertility rate.  The numbers don't leave much space for each person, hence the move, like most cities, to people living and working vertically, piled high on top of each other.  Shanghai boasts some of the tallest skyscrapers in the world, and since 2008 it's had more free-standing buildings above 400m than any other city.

Flying in the train yard

Bikes and dereliction. Two of my favourite things.

I wish I could ride like this guy. 

Apocalyptic morning

Today I look at photographs by Simon Roberts, taken as he travelled through Russia. They are exquisitely bleak. These places look very quiet and very still. Half-forgotten, becalmed. I want to step into them.

 

The images of housing blocks remind me of Pruitt-Igoe, which you can see getting partly demolished in this sequence from Koyaanisqatsi

 

Twenty thousand leagues

Tonight i'm looking at underwater photographs by diver Andrej Belic. You can find more of them here. Fish with bulging eyes. Glimmering shoals. Blackened, barnacle-clad boat wrecks..

Build thyself a fort

Jim Kazanjian uses digital wizardry to merge photographs into fantastical images of crumbling structures. I want to live in one of these dilapidated, shack-like palaces. They look as though they are hovering somewhere on the edge of the world, about to drop off. And there is something very satisfying about the labyrinth geometric patterns you can see in them..

You can find more here http://www.kazanjian.net/

We tread water

Tonight I was looking at pictures of Miru Kim. If your curiosity is roused by dereliction and shadowy glimpses of nudity, take a look here at Naked city spleen. 

 

 On a musical note, this video by The Flashbulb is like the blast of cold air that hits your face when you step outside, having been hidden within four cloying walls for too long. I will be on a mountain in May, I can't wait, it seems an awful long time away. Until then I scurry about the gritty city and gulp in the car fumes.