CCCP Underground: Metro Stations of the Soviet Era

Fighters made of bronze, gigantic wall reliefs depicting heroic workers or cosmonauts, and socialist pomp….

When you enter subway stations in Eastern Europe and in countries that were once part of the USSR today, time seems to stand still. The stations are chroniclers of the history and art of a long-vanished world power. In this volume, photographer Frank Herfort presents around 20 metro systems of the Soviet era from Moscow to Bucharest, from Baku to Tbilisi. His focus is on the details, capturing over 700 works of art with his camera. They were conceived as prestige projects, thousands of kilometres apart and created under different conditions at different times. The stations in his photographs come together to form a holistic and comprehensive representation of socialist art that does not stand alone but relates to the everyday life of people today.

With texts by Knesia Smirnova, specialist in monumental Soviet art and architecture, deputy director at Shchusev State Museum of Architecture.

Frank Herfort has spent over a decade photographing interiors of various public spaces throughout Russia and Eastern Europe. An architectural photographer by trade, Herfort’s personal work is a homage to the décor of the Soviet era that is still very present. Yet, transported into the present, the boundaries between time and context blur and the readers are enabled to create their own narratives.