'Go There and They'll Come'

A lone woman sits in her wheelchair ands cup at the base of subway

steps waiting for passersby. Reflections of prior passersby can be seen

ascending the steps on the shiny marble walls opposite in this bleak

and contrasty photo from Kyiv, Ukraine's fashionable and tourist friendly

center. Your rates and critiques are invited and most welcome. If you

rate harshly or very critically, please submit a helpful and constructive

comment; please share your photographic knowledge to help improve

my photography. Thanks! Enjoy! John

John,

This is a very good image, one can sense the loneliness there. It should be viewed large than the 700px, then the reflection is on the opposite wall is more immediately obvious. The whole scene is so post-Soviet, it could easily have been Moscow.

You have completely understood this photo. 

Yes, it was meant to be shown 'large' and suffers from first view in 'thumbnail' which is a drawback to 'web posting' - -some photos just suffer from first view on the Internet in thumbnail as opposed to running across the same photo full size 24 x 36 inches in a gallery or museum where one could immerse oneself in this woman's loneliness and emptiness . . . having just been bypassed by those people whose reflections you now correctly have identified as climbing the steps.

This is an 'undeground' under Kreshatyk Blvd., which was designed after being destroyed by the Nazis in World War II, by Stalin's most prized architects, and however a monster Stalin was, his architects -- amidst the monstrous nature of Soviet architecture, did a relatively good job of what they had to work with.

Kreshatyk is one of the world's most 'user friendly' streets, the antithesis of Moscow's Tretyakov, which dwarfs the individuals with the state's overwhelming power and does so 'on purpose'.  Kreshatyk on the other hand is an extremely wide boulvard, but lined by benches and a park on one side and double walkways, extremely wide -- almost a carnival with major shops . .. always full of happy people, shoppers, and ultimately lovers from all over Kyiv, Ukraine and evern Europe and the world.

This underground 'subway' (subway means beneath the street, not trains) connects Maidan -- the center now called sometimes 'Independence Square - with the most central Metro Station.

If it 'feels' like Moscow, it is because the architects were Soviet -- the country then was one.

The Metro trains even today are the exact trains as have run for decades on the Moscow Metro and if you ride the Moscow Metro, you will find some stations are almost carbon copies of some Moscow Metro stations, and we all know Moscow's Metro is the most fabulous in the world, even if it lately (last I saw) had gotten somewhat dowdy (I see new trains have been ordered.)

So, if one knows Kyiv and Moscow, one can almost go into a 'fugue state' and be forgiven if one forgets what city one is in, except Kyiv's Metro is more 'laid back' than I remember Moscow when I lived there (near Begavaya Metro station) a decade ago.

I'm a little sad this photo so far has had so few viewers, but ''them's the breaks' -- I am sometimes a very poor predictor of photo success here on this service.

I just know what I like.

Thanks for your informed comment.

john

John (Crosley)

John,

Well, your photo got more viewers than any of mine!:) And it's August, so all bets are off.

The tiny size of the photos we can show online makes even the usually small rewards of subtlety even smaller.  One needs to GRAB the attention of the viewer who can choose between hundreds of superficially similar tiny images.  I wonder how far  Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier Bresson would have gone if they had to depend on the Internet for getting attention of the viewing public...

Although I grew up in the USSR (I left it 33 years ago), and have returned on business to Russia (Moscow) several times a year since 1992, I have never been to Ukraine.  In your photograph, I see the same contrast between the abject poverty and the richness of materials used to construct some of the public spaces there -- specifically, the Metro and some of  the underground passages.

I very much enjoy your photography. I've never liked to carry my DSLR around Moscow...

Best regards,

M. Ts.

Thank you for such a fine compliment.

The use of such rich and fine materials for Metros, public buildings, etc., had a distinct place under Communist Ideology.

Under Communism the State was not only totalitarian, but it reigned supreme, and the individual was just a cog in a very gargantuan wheel.

The method, especially underlain in the design of modern Moscow under the Soviets, was to diminish the individuality of the masses.  They had no personal property to speak of, poor access to necessary products, small flats that were amazingly overcrowded (except for bigwigs), with several families to one flat and maybe an entire family for one room in a communal flat designed for one family, boulevards that were huge but nary a car to be seen except a few official cars, and buildings that were awe-inspiring, but precious little accommodation for pedestrians.

It was all deliberate and an attempt to reduce the citizenry to recognize its place as subsidiary to the State and to Communism.

The advent of World War II and the Nazi near destruction of Kyiv, together with a massive annihilation of a huge number of male citizens made the problem of maintaining a population through reproduction very difficult . . . . especially in Ukraine which had been overrun.

Stalin sent his prize architects to Kyiv and one of the things they did was to make downtown Kyiv's Kreshatik Blvd. at least one of the most user-friendly streets in the world, with the usual huge boulevard and surely few or no cars to use that huge boulevard (then), and an even wider park lining one side with shops for the citizenry, and in the park, long walks (on the short boulevard, Kreshatik) with huge numbers of inviting benches, hundreds of inviting trees, all inviting Kyiv residents (and others from all over Ukraine) especially those who might procreate, to come  enjoy each other's company in a relaxed setting.

I have heard stories of Sexual Puritanism under the Soviets; movies don't depict married couples in bed together even in romantic farces (some of which are really pretty good and mirror some Hollywood farces), so I doubt Stalin's architects had in mind that the couples courting would actually be caught on those benches actually 'making out' and fondling  each other as a prelude to making love and often finding themselves almost 'in the act' as presently.

And that is what one finds on fashionable Kreshatik, almost everywhere when it is not insufferably hot . . . . couples dressed, courting each other, headed for an early marriage and early procreation, for those grandchildren that soon to be babushka is begging for (Where are my grandchildren?' is the mon's common plea as a girl/woman turns 20).

Pressure to marry at that age is great for most young women, and when a woman turns 25 and is not married, aspersions are cast.

It was a great way to repopulate a great nation ravaged of its males by war, and it apparently not only has worked, but it has created a heritage that spooning is done openly now with the fall of Communism, right on the city's main street -- and it's really quite common and since drink in public is often involved, it's often really advanced and serious spooning.

I often think 'get a room!' but remind myself that for the majority of young Kyiv residents, they may have to carry out their romantic endeavors in a back alley, a friend's borrowed flat, or shoo parents and family away to consummate their lust . . . unlike Americans who have their own bedrooms, their own cars, and who can have sleepover guests, or drive far into the woods . . . .(few ordinary Kyiv residents of youthful years have automobiles, though that rapidly is changing and cars are much sought after, but they become slave owners -- as gasoline (benzene) must be paid for, and thus an owner becomes also a 'taxi driver' to pay for benzene and car loan payments.

Overcrowding, I think, still is a major problem, and accounts for much public displays of affection, which often are quite advanced, and usually quite accepted.  I suspect in the heyday of Communism, they were not, as Communism also was Puritanical.

Those are my original thoughts, gleaned from any secondary research, but from my own distillation of circumstances that I have encountered personally,  compared to my own reading of well-regarded history.

Take it or leave it.

At least consider it, and anybody with a contrary argument (and authority), please let me know what you  consider to be 'the truth' as I express just one man's opinion, though based on lots of reflection.

Thanks Mikhail for the comment.  The fine public trappings are to remind the citizens that the State comes first and when good things were parceled out under Communism, the good things went to the State, as the State was paramount,and the citizens could just stand in line, often for essentials, which were ordered and distributed by central planning economists who had little real touch with actual 'need' or 'want' in what surely was a highly corrupt system that ordered Dior gowns by the truckload from Paris, all of which got hijacked by high party official wive (yes, truth, told to me by a recipient of such gowns and her husband).

john

John (Crosley)

john

John (Crosley)

'Time is on our side'  Communism's triumph is inevitable.

If that is so, then it pays to invest in public facilities for the 'long run'.

Hence the choice of durables like marble for walls in Metro or subway passages, and giant ballrooms,or even Metro stations that had chandeliers and could be mistaken for opera or philharmonic houses (and so deep it took minutes on the world's fastest escalators to reach many of them, as they were for the most part bomb-proof, even if designed before the first atomic bomb had been designed and dropped and without knowledge of its potential.

Visitors often are astonished by how deep Moscow's (and Kyiv's Metro lines run, and just how long those escalators -- most have never before seen an escalator one tenth the length of the ultra long escalators that go on forever and forever to take one from most surface stations to the trains (not everywhere and some trains in Moscow run on the surface in outlying areas, but not i the center).

I try to put 2 and 2 together, and come up with 4.  Usually it works out that way while most people don't even recognize the equation.

john

John (Crosley)