Following the release of his bestselling book Soviet Bus Stops, photographer Christopher Herwig finds new wonders of Soviet vernacular in Georgia, Ukraine, and Russia itself.
After the popular and critical success of his first book, Soviet Bus Stops, photographer Christopher Herwig returned to the former Soviet Union to find even more. In this second volume, in addition to discovering new stops in the most remote areas of Georgia and Ukraine, Herwig has pointed his camera at Russia itself. After exhaustive research, he traveled more than 9,000 miles from coast to coast of the largest country in the world in search of new examples of this unusual architectural form.
A foreword by renowned architecture and culture critic Owen Hatherly reveals new information about the origins of the Soviet bus stop. Exploring the state policies that allowed these small architectural forms to flourish, he explains how they reflected Soviet values and how they ultimately remained — despite their incredible individuality — distant outposts of Soviet ideology.
The variety of architectural approaches is striking: along with many boldly modern and brutal designs, there are bus stops shaped like trains, birds, light bulbs, rockets, castles, and even a bus stop with a statue of St. George slaying a dragon. This book, an important supplement to the first volume, is a valuable document of these important and unique structures.
