Kyrgyzstan Diaries Abandoned

 Бишкек, Ак-Туз

First I want to say that it's illegal and very dangerous to enter abandoned buildings/places, so please don't take this post as an invitation to do the same.

Recently I got fascinated by abandoned places, precisely when I started to do portrait photography, I thought: "why don't do portraits in abandoned buildings?".

While I was living in Kyrgyzstan I knew about abandoned villages from the soviet period, so I wanted to visit at least one of them.

Thanks to some friends I was able to visit Ak-Tuz, a village not far from Bishkek. Part of it is abandoned, with ruins of buildings from the Soviet period and an abandoned factory.

I had in my mind an outfit for this shooting and I asked my friend to dress up as close as she could to it, so the shooting was a bit prepared even if it was the first time I visited the place.

After the fall of the soviet union factories and mines in all the country closed so the population moved elsewhere leaving the cities abandoned or almost abandoned as Ak-Tuz. 

What I like to do is visit these places with someone that want to pose for me, in a way to bring back some life and imagine how it could have been before. 

In Bishkek, I found an abandoned hotel, and I visited it twice with two friends. I fell in love with this place, so I wanted to go back. 

In this case, the shooting wasn't prepared, I was asking my friends to pose base on my inspiration and I didn't ask them for a special outfit.

The first time I only visited the first three floors, and the atmosphere is incredible, I was trying to understand how it was before. It is abandoned since 2013, and I don't know why they are not using it now or they don't think about renewing it.

The second time we went to the roof, where we found a bar, the view from there, with all the mountains around, is really beautiful. Going up with the floors we saw different amazing graffiti, some of them gave me inspiration for portraits or photos.

This is my last post from Kyrgyzstan, I loved living there, it was one of the most incredible experiences that I had in my life till now, I will never forget it and I hope I will have the opportunity to visit it again. If you want to read my weekly blog from Kyrgyzstan, the Kyrgyzstan Diaries, click here.