Description

The project looks for the pastoral Arcadia in the centrally-planned Soviet modernist neighbourhoods. The Soviet post-war modernism coincided with the global spread of the International Style, except here it lasted from the late 1950s up till 1990s, while planned economy and state-owned land allowed realisation of nation-sized construction programmes.

The uniformly designed residential areas were built from scratch along with all the infrastructure, as well as pre-planned green spaces and parks. Today the urban vegetation of the post-Soviet Arcadia appears to be out of control. The trees outgrow neighbouring buildings, and the tamed palms outgrow their pots. The plants become the result and the illustration of the transformations, while remaining their active participants. Once conceived with the concept of the socialist paradise, the utopian garden city in mind, today these cities re-conquered by plants create the new romantic landscape of the post-Soviet space.

The photographs were made in Tolyatti, Vladivostok, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Minsk (Belarus), Tashkent (Uzbekistan), Bishkek, and Osh (Kyrgyzstan).

Anastasia Tsayder was born in 1983 in St. Petersburg and is currently based in Moscow, Russia. Anastasia graduated from the Faculty of Photojournalism of St Petersburg Journalists Union.
Her commissioned work has appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek, Bloomberg Markets, Forbes (Russia), Port, Die Zeit, De Volkskrant, Washington Post, D – la Republica, Itineraries of Taste, RBC, Bolshoi Gorod, Afisha, etc.