Playground

Playground

When I was a child, I dreamed of being an astronaut. There was a rocket-shaped slide near my house. I often perched on it at night, gazed at stars, thought of distant planets and space adventures.
My city is like a huge cosmodrome, where near 40 rockets are stored at many children playgrounds. The most of them are of age of the Soviet Union. There were times when they were the symbols of human achievement and of people's space exploration wishes. At that time the first Earth satellite was launched, the first man was sent into space, people dreamed of building cities on the surface of the Moon, at Mars... Time passed by and space is still just a dream of humanity. The rockets at children playgrounds became the heaps of rusting ruins. By day there are kids still playing nearby, by night there are drug addicts and alcoholics.
These rockets are the nostalgic story from my childhood, maybe an attempt to run away from reality into the world of wishful thinking. 
Making this project i spent a lot of night hours at playgrounds. I still gazed at stars and thought of distant planets. But this time they seemed significantly more distant.

Cheboksary, 2010