Waiting For The End Of The World
There are innumerable things to fear about a nuclear exchange that are symbolized by the existence of shelters designed to protect a citizenry from an overwhelming, devastating attack. If you put the images of people's fears into a visual representation, the clear winner is the mushroom cloud-- the poster child of the cold war. The bomb shelter, specifically the blast shelter, has been something that has existed as a literary or intellectual idea but never as a visual image. My goal with this project was to reexamine these locations-- to visualize them and evoke their present status. And thereby make them real and tangible.
Working on this project I realized that there is such a minute number of extant shelters that they are ineffective as a logical solution or salvation. A nuclear exchange means an end to civilization as we know it. It may not end all life, but it would certainly be the most drastic evolutionary hiccup experienced by humankind.
Shelters are the architecture of failure-- the failure of moderation, politics, communication, diplomacy, and sustaining humanity. They represent the ultimate in optimism and belief in individual survival and paradoxically the ultimate in pessimism-- the expectation of the destruction of humanity. The architects of these structures envisioned an inevitable cataclysm.
In St. Petersburg, Russia, I photographed "The Trendy Griboyedov Club." I found it wildly optimistic. People use these clubs-- converted underground shelters-- to drink, dance, and mate. This is a celebration of life rather than an anticipation of death and destruction. The club rejects the intent and purpose of its origins. Finally it made sense.
