In the Shadow of Faded Dreams

A visit to the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre reveals the nostalgia associated with the former USSR's status of space superpower, and sheds light on a close-knit community of space-lovers.

Space has long provided a canvas for the imagination. Hearing stories about the Space Age in my childhood, I always associated it with a sense of youth's almost limitless possibilities - the excitement of discovery, the allure of adventure, the challenge of competition, the confidence of mastery. It could promise giant possibilities but also threaten. Like in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, space could be far away or far out. However, when I met Korniyenko Mikhail Borisovich, an active Russian cosmonaut who did his first flight in 2010, I realized that for some, space, instead of being a dream, was regarded as reality. Enthusiastically speaking about his profession, people who train him and the training facility itself, he seemed to be talking about a place and people from another era. After this crucial meeting it became necessary for me to see this place with my own eyes.

I therefore decided to travel to Star City — the heart of the Russian Space programme. A small town 25km North-East of Moscow, it was a top-secret location in the Soviet Union. Both a residential and training complex for cosmonauts and people serving the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre (GCTC), it was once described as a Communist oasis with star men living in gleaming silver towers or the only place where the promised Soviet Communism could be found.

However, with the Russian Space programme facing an uncertain future, the glory of the olden days had gone. Facing poor living conditions and small salaries, this community survives only through its passion for space and their extraordinary goal of reaching stars. Due to the insularity of this world the physical space and its spirit has been preserved. As if trapped in a window of time, this place is an imprint of an era that no longer exists. Welcoming you with a friendly, calm socialist atmosphere it seems like you are travelling back in time, while Gagarin statues and portraits gaze at you from every corner. The training facility itself quickly became my point of focus, as the life in Star City revolves around it and it is where you discover a sort of dreamland from which people never seem to leave. A strange place of visual contradictions where grim cement buildings covered in peeling paint rise from cracked pavements. Hidden inside are surreal machines that you could only expect to encounter in Jules Vernes's books.
Zlata Rodionova, <em>In the Shadow of Faded Dreams</em>. Top:	<em>Chute Chair</em>, a chair with an included parachute. The pack and back cushion combination are shaped to fit fully in the seat to provide a large, stable, comfortable base for the pilot to sit. The parachute container is ready to use in case of emergency. Above: 	<em>Hydrolab Instructor</em>. The instructor's role is to help cosmonauts to adjust the lift, drift the balance and guarantee their safety when they train underwater. A training can last up to six hours. The trainer wished to remain anonymous
Zlata Rodionova, In the Shadow of Faded Dreams. Top: Chute Chair, a chair with an included parachute. The pack and back cushion combination are shaped to fit fully in the seat to provide a large, stable, comfortable base for the pilot to sit. The parachute container is ready to use in case of emergency. Above: Hydrolab Instructor. The instructor's role is to help cosmonauts to adjust the lift, drift the balance and guarantee their safety when they train underwater. A training can last up to six hours. The trainer wished to remain anonymous
In today's Russia, which has lost its former Communist ideals and is still searching for a unifying national idea, Gagarin's pioneering flight — the pinnacle of the Soviet Space programme — often stands as a symbol of history that the nation could really be proud of, despite the trauma of losing its superpower status. Ivan Ludintsev, a Russian journalist said: "If we did not have Gagarin, we would not be able to look into each other's eyes. Gagarin is a symbol for ages to come. We don't have another one and perhaps never will. He is our national idea."

Meeting with people working at the Yuri Gagarin Training Centre, you definitely see that for them Gagarin is a hero, working in the space field for years and years. It seems like the air they breath is filled with stardust. Suspended in time, they almost blend with the surreal machines they work with. The physical space they evolve in shapes their everyday reality. Their motivation remains their childhood dream and they follow it, as if unaware of what is happening elsewhere in the country.

In this project I wanted to display both an image of reality and memory, combining two dimensions — the present and the past. A hypnotic and sometimes surreal composition of a place and residents that initially seem unremarkable but work towards an incredible goal. In the Shadow of Faded Dreams aims to reveals the nostalgia associated to the USSR's status of Space superpower and sheds light on a close-knit community of Space-lovers, still clinging to the decaying legacy of the 1960s Space dream. Zlata Rodionova (@zlata07)

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