Album "The Last Resort" about Soviet sanatoriums
WONDERZINE talks about beautiful, functional or strange things that you want to buy immediately.
from £ 20
www.kickstarter.com
Last year, British journalist Mariam Omidi, who wrote about Russia for The Guardian and The Calvert Journal, traveled to the Khoja Obi Garm sanatorium in Tajikistan and was impressed with both the procedures and the architecture of the Soviet era. A massive concrete building, stuck on the slope of the Gissar Range, still looks futuristic in the XXI century, but only with the retro prefix.
Based on the trip, an article was born first, and then an idea for a whole travel book on places of past glory. Together with a team of six photographers (from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Berlin, London and Paris), Mariam launched a campaign on Kickstarter to raise funds for a tour of post-Soviet resorts, from Kazakhstan to Georgia. As a result, a book should appear with the sadly ironic title "The Last Resort" about how architecture, culture, life and ideology collide - and also about what happens to these symbols of a certain epoch over time. As the authors of the project stipulate, this is not “ruined porn” - they are not interested in abandoned sanatoriums, but in fully functioning ones.
The idea was readily supported by the design bureau and the publishing house Fuel, which released the album Soviet Bus Stops and promised to take over the design and publication of The Last Resort, if everything worked out. Everything happened: until the end of the crowdfunding campaign another five days, but instead of 15 thousand pounds, 24 thousand have already been collected - so the album will go on sale in the spring of 2017. At the same time, the project can still be supported: for 20 pounds you will receive an album and a postcard, for 35 - two albums and a set of postcards, and for 75 pounds - a signed print of any photo from the album of your choice.
Photo: Kickstarter