Ischezai︠u︡shchee proshloe
Fotoalʹbom
en
translation: A disappearing past - Photo album
Illustrations and maps
color illustrations
Language
In Russian and English
78 USD
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Pavel Zhdanov, the book's author (journalist, photographer, and publisher) conceived A Disappearing Past as a book of photographs about the state of the former mines, fields, camps, and settlements of the Dalstroy Trust. As a supplement to the pictures he quoted excerpts from the literary works by the people who served their sentences in Kolyma: Shalamov, Lesniak, Demant, Demidov, Dombrovsky, Vagner, Federolf.Vilensky, and others. Most of the texts match geographically or thematically the places described in the short stories and give the reader an idea about where the events took place. The comments explain which people are connected with this or that place and event and where or when the photographs were taken.
About a hundred pictures from dozens of expeditions conducted in different years also show that the past (the material traces of the infamous Dalstroy Trust) is vanishing. Bridges are being dismantled, burned, or swept away by floods; the inside perimeters of zones are now overgrown; alder groves are destroying walls; roofs rot and collapse; metal constructions and tools rust; clothes, shoes, and household items are decaying. In recent years, the degradation of the former places of detention has reached its last and most active stage. Soon there will be no traces of the Dalstroy Trust left, and even today most of them have no visible signs: there are only landscapes and occasional crosses set by old mine keepers and a church, to mark camp cemeteries.
A Disappearing Past is an attempt to rescue the past of the country and acquaint those who care about it with a small part of Russian literary and visual history. Perhaps the book will make one read the recollections of former prisoners and understand the conditions in which they had to live and survive.
