Molodoi Chelovek: "My origins lie in the past, but I am from the future"

In 1984, intoxicated by hope and idealism and armed with a few grainy images and an architectural map, I made my inaugural trip to Moscow. For the first time I stood in front of the crumbling ruins of the Dom Narkomfina and gazed in astonishment at the Club Russakova that I imagined landing like spaceships as if they had stepped out of the pages of Bogdanov’s utopian novel Red Star. Like visiting terminally ill relatives, regularly checking up on the state of health of these two ‘memories of the future’ has long since become an obligatory ritual. In 1988 not for the last time I took another series of photographs. An old war veteran was sitting on a bench in the slush amongst the bare trees that stood in front. Confused he asked me,

“Молодой человек, почему вы принимаете фотографии этого разорения?”

“Потому что,” я сказал, “что это, возможно, самое важное здание ХХ века.”

Composed as a dialogue with a building, this sketch reflects upon the ancient origins and continued importance of the social condensor as an idea whose time has yet to come.

(Young man, why are you taking photographs of this ruin? “Because”, I replied, “ It is possibly the most important building of the twentieth century.”)