varanine

dailymeh:

I keep coming back to this photo essay by Jonas Bendiksen. I may have linked to it before, but Magnum appears to have upgraded its shitty website into something actually usable since then. These are photographs from the border area between Russia and Kazakhstan, where space debris from Russia’s Baikonur launch site rains down, sometimes in populated areas. The first photograph is simply perfect, too perfect: it doesn’t look real, it looks like a collage. Here is the image caption: “Villagers collecting scrap from a crashed spacecraft, surrounded by thousands of white butterflies. Environmentalists fear for the region’s future due to the toxic rocket fuel.” In the second image, a young boy looks eagerly up at the sky: he is looking for falling stars, or, alternatively, rocket debris that can be sold as scrap metal. The third: “A farmer taking an evening stroll past the wreck of a Soyuz spacecraft. In this agricultural village, rockets routinely fall into people’s back yards.” And finally, the fourth: dead cows, possibly killed by toxic rocket fuel in the soil. Who needs staged photography when reality can be as wonderful and as sad as this?

Sadly, the book these pictures are from, Satellites, is one of the many photobooks that are out of print and only available for outrageous prices in the secondhand market.

8 months ago

1. toystory2wasok reblogged this from nouvelle-nouveau
2. kncj likes this
3. grael likes this
4. deshaunicus likes this
5. jesstify reblogged this from idterab
6. ghadanihilism likes this
7. futuristdinnerparty reblogged this from idterab
8. tomakassem reblogged this from idterab
9. countlessothers likes this
10. umacasaemtroia likes this
11. roseamer likes this
12. moremorrissey likes this
13. thestrongestofthestrange likes this
14. idterab reblogged this from dailymeh and added:

    These are photographs from the border area between Russia and Kazakhstan, where space debris from Russia’s Baikonur...

15. idterab likes this
16. milliehawthorne likes this
17. creativetirade likes this
18. thisguyknowswhatimtalkingabout reblogged this from pretty-fucking-average
19. soonji reblogged this from stephenhoang
20. avc94 likes this
21. stephenhoang reblogged this from dailymeh
22. eloso likes this
23. fadedpastel reblogged this from nouvelle-nouveau
24. chrisniebohr reblogged this from slavin
25. geoffnorthcott likes this
26. theymightbeclippy likes this
27. literaryappellation likes this
28. thesoftestedge likes this
29. melancholyparadox reblogged this from nouvelle-nouveau
30. toph3r likes this
31. insecure-enrapture likes this
32. nouvelle-nouveau reblogged this from himmelbjerget
33. twominutespastfive reblogged this from slavin
34. naveen likes this
35. thenelsontwins likes this
36. whereveryougotoday reblogged this from getoffmyblog
37. idancohen likes this
38. slavin reblogged this from varanine and added:

    It would be easy to skip past these photos or their explanation. Click to enlarge them, really look, and then read the...

39. lystra reblogged this from synmirror
40. skelly likes this
41. miceinadrainagepipe reblogged this from dailymeh
42. az0nto-madness likes this
43. emilreads likes this
44. synmirror reblogged this from dailymeh
45. twistedeye likes this
46. distinctiveinc reblogged this from dailymeh
47. cencalphoto likes this
48. mytumbrslame likes this
49. iseedoubleyou likes this
50. ltwp likes this
51. Show more notesLoading...