Kneel before the bus! Soviet roadside wonders – in pictures
From tractors on columns to pavements that take off, French photographer Jason Guilbeau outsmarted lockdown to find the former USSR’s strangest street relics
by All photographs by Jason Guilbeau
Odessa, Ukraine
Soviet Signs and Street Relics is a new book by French photographer Jason Guilbeau. He used Google Street View to virtually navigate thousands of kilometres of the former USSR in search of remnants from the former Soviet empire. Soviet Signs and Street Relics is published by Fuel Design
Vasylkiv, Ukraine
From remote rural roadsides to densely populated cities, the photographs reveal traces of history in plain sight: a brutalist hammer and sickle stands in a remote field; a jet fighter is anchored to the ground by its concrete exhaust plume; a skeletal tractor sits on a cast-iron platform. Passers-by seem oblivious to these objects
Saint Petersburg, Russia
Guilbeau spent months on his computer, searching for strange roadside remains of the Soviet empire
Vorkuta, Russia
Transport is a recurring subject for the sculptures, with cars, trains, boats and planes joined by tractors, pickup trucks and helicopters
Zernograd, Russia
In the book’s introduction, architectural historian Clem Cecil writes: ‘Like bystanders cheering on marathon runners, roadside propaganda was there to work as a morale-booster in the exhausting collective endeavour’
Dnipro, Ukraine
The depiction of movement reaches an artistic climax in Dnipro, Ukraine, where the entire pavement is co-opted into the tableau, swerving dramatically away from the road, breaking through a line of trees, and rearing up to become the concrete vapour trail of a fighter jet, frozen in mid-takeoff
Verkhnodniprovsk Raion, Ukraine
Cecil writes: ‘Perhaps these objects persist because of their invisibility. Nobody sees them any more’
Salkyn-Tor, Naryn province, Kyrgyzstan
It’s not possible to reach the end of a rainbow, but you could always make do with this arch in Kyrgyzstan
Kherson Oblast, Ukraine
As the Guardian’s architecture critic Oliver Wainwright writes: ‘Who wouldn’t be cheered by the sight of the big plump watermelon, freshly sliced open and proudly displayed, on the corner of a street in Kherson Oblast?’
Kaliningrad, Russia
He adds: ‘Whatever their fate in the real world, these relics will live on in the omniscient cloud of Google Street View, the roadside propaganda of the former communist empire mapped in minute detail by American big tech’
Novorossiysk, Russia
A ship teeters on the crest of a concrete wave in the Russian port city of Novorossiysk, its anti-aircraft guns pointing to the sky
Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine
This project offers those desperate to travel the world some much-needed escapism during the pandemic
Vorkuta, Russia
You wait ages for a bus to come along ... and then realise it’s suspended on a concrete platform in Vorkuta
Shepetivka, Ukraine
A steam engine sits suspended on a fat column
Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia
Other books published by Fuel include Soviet Bus Stops and Russian Criminal Tattoos – although the contents of those were photographed in person rather than taken from Google Street View