[Image: From “City of Shadows” by Alexey Titarenko].
Some of the coolest photographs I’ve seen recently are these long exposure shots of crowds in St. Petersburg, Russia. They were taken by Alexey Titarenko for a project called “City of Shadows.”
What I think is so interesting about this is that an otherwise unremarkable technique – the long exposure – has the effect of transforming these assemblies of people into demonic blurs, black masses moving through the city. These look more like scenes from Jacob’s Ladder or Silent Hill.
In the photograph below, for instance, the repeating glimpse of a hand pulling itself up the banister seems strangely unnerving –
[Image: From “City of Shadows” by Alexey Titarenko].
– and, in the next photo, the crowd takes on the appearance of a machine, hauling itself through human gears up the stairs of old buildings. A mechanism of bones from the afterlife.
[Image: From “City of Shadows” by Alexey Titarenko].
But I suppose this is what the world would look like if we could see the residue of everyone who’s ever passed through – a vast, multi-limbed creature made of tens of thousands of human bodies, winding its way through streets and buildings, looking for some place to go.
See more from this project and others at Alexey Titarenko’s website.
(Thanks to Adam Billyeald for the tip!)
My god they’re beautiful if quite unnerving. Thank’s for posting Geoff.
this is brilliant stuff. thank you!
That first one looks like smoke billowing from a doorway and down the stairs. My first thought was water cascading, but it’s too ephemeral.
It definitely looks scary. Great post!
The order among the pandemonium is interesting – one entire side of the staircase is completely unused in two of the shots. I wonder if they were blocked off at the bottom, or if this was an orderly group?
Once again, Duchamp got it right.
I think the reasons these resonate so very much, especially for an urbanite like myself, is that they capture a certain truth about humanity, not just in relation to our cities, but, in the broader sense, the real nature of our lives.
They capture things we avoid. There is the dissolution of individuality, identity, self, etc on display, with all the connected discomforts, but more than that an explicit reminder of our extremely hard to swallow transience.
All in all profound photos.
most, if not all, of the time i do not believe in ghosts, the afterlife, heaven, the world to come. at this moment, i think i might.
some of the repetitive ghost-imagery of Beksinski but realized photographically. haunting.
Vonnegut. Totally. Which book was it? Slaughterhouse? where he describes the beings that can see time?
Amazing pictures…Reminds me of the black cloud in LOST.
The first picture has what looked at first glance to be the symbols from the Playstation joypad above each door. It reminds me of those eerie ‘Third Place’ ads they ran a while back.
@Thiago: the Tralfamadorians are in Slaughterhouse Five and The Sirens of Titan.
Quite by coincidence, reading up on haiku, just now i came across a micro-poem by Ezra Pound, ‘In a Station of the Metro’:
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
That put me in mind of this too.
You can listen to the photographer Alexey Titarenko talking about his photographs in this interview at Lens Culture:
http://www.lensculture.com/titarenko.html
The interview is especially cool because he speaks in Russian, and a translator provides the English version.
These photos look like a scene from Timur Bekmambetov’s Day Watch / Night Watch / Twilight Watch series.
Norman McClaren’s “Pas de Deux” is a beautifull example of movement turned in to volume.
cheers
Hey quiet an interesting blog you got here!
we have a new architecture forum
http://archiyo.coolforums.org
in which we have a section for bloggers who blog about architecture. It would be great to see a link (and a description) to your blog there. This would benefit students and professionals alike.
The forum is still very new, so you might not find many posts, but we are growing fast 🙂
Thanks
Rutu
Really echoes Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase. Hauntingly beautiful photos, but it’s scary how each individual has lost their sense of personal identity.
Those photos are haunting and so suggestive… thanks for posting, Geoff!
Amazing! At first, I thought it was smoke!
They are the ghosts of the millions of victims of Lenin, Stalin and Hitler who died in St. Petersburg in the last 90 years. No one will recognize or acknowledge them.
if you look at his own homepage you can see a zoomed out shot of the stair case – it’s actually a line up to get into some kind of venue – suppose that’s why they only use one part of the stair.
Hauntingly beautiful. It’s as if the photographer has captured something unknown to the living.
Great blog. I’m glad I discovered it.
Magnificent, haunting.
i’ve seen the world right that way.
Wow, those are amazing. Truly incredible!
Oh My……. These are… I’ve got to say, speechless…….
Great Job.