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The Forgotten Cities of Siberia by Filip Singer
The subject is familiar: post-apocalyptic scenery inhabited, and sometimes terrorised, by nomadic hordes. Depending on the temporal situation of the plot, the newly created tribes have configured fictive worlds into new communities with the help of artefacts and rituals that have survived from the days before the catastrophe. As a rule they do not wear head-scarves in Filip Singer’s pictures. Nevertheless: the young Czech photographer spreads out a surrealistic landscape, and the sequence is all the more horrific when he is exploring not some distorted fictional image but rather the reality of the people stranded in distant Siberia and its cities. Norilsk and Mirny are mining towns encircled not just by ice and deep forests but also by the paper barricades of various visitor’s permits. The decline that set in with the collapse of the Soviet Union hit these workers’ colonies in the country’s Far East with full force. Thus the observer travels with Singer to a foreign archipelago of urban islands, into everyday life that seems almost unreal with its ice, mineral dust and tower blocks that seem to have been abandoned. A mine becomes a crater – what fell to earth here? And a coffee break becomes a conspiratorial meeting, whose only apparent goal can be a longed-for break-out. Even the children playing on the icy terrain are no exception – the horror of Hieronymus Bosch and the whacky obliviousness of a Mad Max are found here as well.
