Soviet Bus Stops

Soviet Bus Stops #1

by Christopher Herwig

Photographer Christopher Herwig first noticed the unusual architecture of Soviet-era bus stops during a 2002 long-distance bike ride from London to St. Petersburg. Challenging himself to take one good photograph every hour, Herwig began to notice surprisingly designed bus stops on otherwise deserted stretches of road. Twelve years later, Herwig had covered more than 18,000 miles in 14 countries of the former Soviet Union, traveling by car, bike, bus and taxi to hunt down and document these bus stops.

The local bus stop proved to be fertile ground for local artistic experimentation in the Soviet period, and was built seemingly without design restrictions or budgetary concerns. The result is an astonishing variety of styles and types across the region, from the strictest Brutalism to exuberant whimsy.

Soviet Bus Stops is the most comprehensive and diverse collection of Soviet bus stop design ever assembled, including examples from Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Abkhazia, Georgia, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus and Estonia. Originally published in a quickly sold-out limited edition, Soviet Bus Stops, named one of the best photobooks of 2014 by Martin Parr, is now available in a highly anticipated, expanded smaller-format trade edition.

Genres: Photography, Architecture, Nonfiction, Art, History, Russia, Travel

128 pages, Hardcover

Published August 21, 2014

Reviews

[Kit · Rating 4 out of 5]

This obsession all started for me with my coworker.
We were on the desk one day when we were discussing a mosaic program my library hosted. My coworker, who was raised in Ukraine, made mention of the beautiful works of art that were found on the side of the road where she grew up.
"Doing these reminded me of the bus stops back home."
"B-bus stops? Did I hear you right?"
"Yes! Bus stops! They are all decorated in their own way."
"The bus stops are art?!"
And then, we were off to Google.
The two of us spent the rest of the hour between patrons looking at Soviet Bus Stops online, her identifying them to me based on art style and landscape. I'd never heard of it, but thinking back, it seems the most logical and lovely use of local skills and spirit in hindsight. We found out about these books through our seeking out of photos and both promptly placed interlibrary loans for both volumes, resolving to swap them once we finished our own.
What a great chance to grow closer to someone you work with. Whenever I think of her, I'm always going to think of her as a little girl waiting at a beautiful mosaic bus stop. :)

[Rhode PVD · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely marvelous! I heard about this book from several articles at Artnet and such, which were packed with photos. So I was worried that maybe the PR had shot the book's wad, as it were, and there wouldn't be much more inside. Well, fear allayed! This book is packed with loads of photos that were not otherwise available. And they are absolutely delightful.

If you are a fan of folk art, kooky architecture, midcentury modernism or Eastern Europe, you will adore this book. It's fairly small in size, perhaps 6 x 4"? But fairly thick. Perfect for a guest room, side table, or nook where you want to pop something entrancing that's not as overwhelming in size as a typical coffee table book.

The photos are of bus stops out on country roads, often in what looks like fairly desolate areas, in countries many Americans have never been to, including Latvia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, etc. Most public buildings built in former soviet states were clunky and unimaginative (to say the least) but apparently bus stops were not considered "important" enough for bureacratic oversight. So these bus stops were built by locals for locals, and are unusually full of favors, colors, shapes, experiments in architecture and fun with concrete.

It's a great reminder that we humans have more imagination and creativity than we maybe give ourselves credit for.

[Katinas Čiobrelis | knygos, kelionės ir kiti įdomūs dalykai · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looking to the art book was like back to the childhood and i liked it with some kind of nostalgic feeling

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was great! And yep, exactly what it says on the tin (/cover). A hundred or so pages of Soviet bus stops, with a couple of pages at the beginning covering a little historical background. If you're into architecture and/or photography you'll probably like this!

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great example of a book that does exactly what you'd expect, Soviet Bus Stops is the outcome of years spent travelling through the former Soviet Union by Canadian Christopher Herwig.

30,000km later, we have this: a testament to the way design will break through strictures at every opportunity. There's a wide range of design approaches on display here, and most of them are, I guarantee, more interesting than the last bus stop you spent time at. There's elements of national dress, cleanly aesthetic curves, and tableaux. There's simplicity and complexity, with utility the only clear link between them: these are places designed to be used by the public.

(This gallery gives you some idea.)

It would be easy to make claims about the increasing ruin of these largely concrete structures mirroring the system that birthed them, but the book doesn't make them. Instead, it provides a travelogue only, showing the reader the differences found in now-nations by dint of the design something so ubiquitous we rarely pay attention to them.

Get on board.

[Cody]

A joyful journey, full of color, texture, and a sense of place, Soviet Bus Stops is at once a travelog as well as a thoughtful discussion about form vs. function and the legacy of public art.

[Tommy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Soviet architecture is usually considered repetitive and mundane, but funny enough the bus stops are anything but. Local artists were given leeway and encouraged to give bus stops a unique style and sense of place. After all, this was a time when just about all soviet citizens had to rely on transit to get around. I would have never known!

Talk about finding beauty in the little things. The pictures in here are so fun

[Xavier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una interesante vista de lo que era la antigua Unión Soviética desde un ángulo inusual: las paradas de autobuses. Si bien el arte de Herwig nos remite a una época que va desapareciendo, quedq como testimonio que alguna vez tuvo peso.

[Shoshanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely breathtaking!!! So beautiful! The variety of styles, the regional flavor, the experimentation, the colors, the shapes... I'm definitely buying this.

I learned about this book from Isa Segalovich! Check out her cool IG / TT!

[Pontus Presents · Rating 5 out of 5]

. . . for three years I explored the five former republics of Central Asia. The stereotypes were all there: concrete apartment blocks, generous vodka shots, towering statues of Lenin. But so were the eccentricities that defied Soviet republics, many were unique, imaginative, and sometimes a bit mad. Each new bus stop I encountered came with its own personality. They made me realise that the Soviet Union can be remembered for more than the clichés we grew up with in the West. Behind the Iron Curtain were millions of individuals who liked to daydream, wanted to push the limits of creativity and needed a way to share it. – Christopher Herwig, intro.

One of the most famous bus stop architects is Zurab Tsereteli from Georgia, an artist who regularly favoured form over function. ‘I cannot answer why there is no roof, why is this, why is that – it's their problem. I, as an artist, do everything artistically,’ he said.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Veldig artig bok! Utfordrer stereotypen om at sovjetisk arkitektur hovedsakelig er uniform og utilitaristisk, ved å fokusere på et område (buss-stopp) der vesten er en god del mer kjedelig. Hvorfor kan vi ikke ha kreative buss-stopp i Norge??

Uansett, å ta en øl på et øde buss-stopp i Øst-Europa eller Sentral-Asia (mens det regner utenfor?) ville vært drømmen. Me and who.

[Atlantean BCT · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's easy to see how interest in Soviet Bus shelters could become an obsessive. A mainly pictorial book. The various bus shelters are fascinating, some bizarrely don't seem to fulfil the basic function of providing shelter. Some don't appear to be on a road at all! An esoteric subject, but none for that.

[Lee Osborne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I often eat my lunch in a bookshop café, and while I was doing so today, I happened to sit at a table next to the photography section. This is a passion of mine, so my eyes wandered over the books as I ate. This one immediately caught my eye, with its minimalist design and stark concrete structure on the cover.

I picked it up and had a look, but it was shrink-wrapped so I couldn't see what was in it. However, I had a feeling I'd love it, so I bought it - and Soviet Bus Stops Volume 2 - on impulse.

I unwrapped and read the book on my journey home from work, and I'm pleased to say I made the right decision - the book is a little gem. Like many photography books, you can leaf through it in little more than a few minutes, but you'll go back and enjoy it again and again. The author spent no less than twelve years photographing bus stops across the whole of the former Soviet Union, and the structures he found are incredibly varied and eccentric. More often than not, they're in remote and bleak surroundings and in a state of disrepair, but somehow that just adds to the charm.

Interestingly enough there's not a single photo of a bus in the whole book, apart from a couple of images of toy buses at the front and back, but there's a few human interest pictures showing people doing various things, but generally looking quite serious.

There's actually some real beauty in some of these pictures, and it's immediately made me think that my own urban landscape is incredibly bland and dreary. Murals and mosaics abound, and make you realise that the former USSR wasn't just about brutal uniformity - there was some variety and creativity in there as well.

Really looking forward to Volume 2!

[Alec · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my flatmates got it as a Christmas present and brought it back to uni with him. I stumbled across it on our kitchen table and started having a flick through. My initial confusion at the unexpected title and topic of the book soon turned to wonder and amazement at the images inside. I really enjoyed it and I hope he leaves it there for a while longer so I can have another look some time!

[Aaron Ambrose · Rating 4 out of 5]

As fascinating as the subjects of these photos are, Herwig does something even more interesting by well representing the landscape they live in. It makes sense that the bus stops most likely to survive until now are the ones that are the most remote. Gorgeous, bizarre, poignant.

[Johanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quenches your travel bug, offers picture porn and presses the nostalgia button all at once.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting book of photographs of Soviet-era bus stop shelters (called "pavilions" by the Soviet authorities) in many of the former Soviet republics. Some of these structures are decades old and haven't been kept up - but they were quite important years ago, as there wasn't much private car ownership (of course - in a communist society) and the population had to rely on bus transportation in areas outside the big cities to get around. These sometimes quite elaborate pavilions, almost mini-buildings, must have served as spots to socialize as the customers waited the bus - they could include picnic-style tables, benches, and may be enclosed on three sides, with windows, sometimes with doors. Some are quite sculptural - architecturally quite interesting and inventive. All sorts of ideas were tried out - some quite inventive. Colorful decor including murals or mosaics on many of them contrast with the often very monotonous surroundings of remote areas of the the country: Scrub-land/desert, forests, remote mountainous rural areas. That they are mostly crumbling and the nearby roadways often look not too well kept up gives the book a sense of melancholy, how the implosion of the Soviet Union may have led to the physical collapse of infrastructure everywhere within its borders. Since these shelters were built in an otherwise rigidly conformist era of architecture, they show that architectural creativity in official building hadn't completely died out in the otherwise conformist later decades of the USSR under communism. The photographs themselves are straightforward but also collectively convey a sense of utter desolation, isolation, and ruin, as if looking into an alternate reality where money/investment is largely absent, as infrastructure decays.

The book includes a forward by British writer/intellectual Jonathan Meades as well as an introduction by the author/photographer.

Here are some quotes from the forward and introduction:

From the Forward:

"The past decade has witnessed a burgeoning fascination with the largely unknown architecture of the Leonid Brezhnev Plays Vegas school." "...a more general reassessment of late modernism and of brutalism in particular." "Christopher Herwig's obsessional project also posthumously illumines the Soviet empire's taste for the utterly fantastical." "When did these shelters turn into drop-in centers? Does it matter? It gives them a use. And it gives people who live in remote, pub-less, village-hall-less isolation a place to hang out. The shelters provide an ad hoc social service."

From the author's Introduction "The Journey and the Obsession:

"In Canada, where I come from, bus stops are all the same. But in the former Soviet republics, many were unique, imaginative, and sometime a bit mad."

"Bus stop designs had certain guidelines, but they were not tightly enforced. Design was limited only by common sense, and even that was sometimes completely abandoned. One of the most famous bus stop architects is Zurab Tsereteli from Georgia, an artist who regularly favored form over function."

"In the Soviet Union, cars were a luxury, but the public transport system was well developed and celebrated. Bus routes reached even the most remote corners of the republics."

"'It was a government stipulation that they be beautiful, that they improve the environment and that they focus on a local aesthetic,' said [architecture student Lubov] Marchuk."

"'We had a committee, an architectural and construction council, and I suggested that thees bus stops shouldn't be about just a frame, glass, and seating,' [Tsereteli] ... said. 'People should get pleasure out of it. We decided it should be monumental art in space.'"

"The incredible variety of bus stops emphasizes the vast cultural and geographical diversity across the fifteen republics that made up the Soviet Union."

"The design process was often collaborative - anyone could contribute their own ideas, and while there was usually a chief architect, the process involved local sculptors, craftspeople and students."

"Nowhere was the bus stop more important than in the remotest of villages."

"Budget expenditures varied widely in the different republics. Tsereteli, whose designs were for sites where the political elite spent their holidays, had virtually unlimited budgets for his creations, but in most cases there was a strict limit."

All in all, a very interesting alternative view into the former USSR's territory. A vast thinly populated country with very few cars on the road.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Being the only book on bustops I have ever read, nothing to compare it to. The structures are very interesting examples of how to make a utilitarian structure say something about your community, such as the Estonian ones all being wooden, whilst almost all the others are concrete. As the author points out, Western bustops in cities are all the same. These are each unique. None of the seats look very comfortable though. I would have liked information about the people using them. Who are they and where are they going like in the paragraph where the author says it was more a local meeting spot than actual bus stop and watched two men come out of the forest in different areas and meet for a drink, perhaps vodka or home brew.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really intrigued by this book since I first read about it. I still love the concept about these very original takes on busstops in the former USSR. The pictures in the book are wonderfull and some stops are truly works of art. There is a nice mix between well maintained bus stops or some that are left to detiorate. Which is actually a shame. What I did miss was a bit more explanation. I would loved to have read more about the history of some of the stops. Why they depict certain themes. In the beginning of the book their is a brief history but I would just love to read more then just that foreword about them.

[Semih · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gürcistan Signaaghi'ye yaptığım seyahatte karşılaştığım, dağ başındaki bir sovyet rus dönemi yapısı brutal estetikli duraktan sonra araştırmaya başladığım konunun yalnızca benim ilgimi değil Christopher Herwig'in de ilgisini çektiğini, hattaonu binlerce kilometrelik bir seyahate çıkartacak kadar etkilediğini gördüm. Belgeseline erişemediğim bu konunun yalnızca güzel baskılı kitabı ile yetiniyorum. Açıklamaların ve yazılı kısımların daha fazla olmasını isterdim ancak bir fotoğraf portfolyosu olarak oldukça başarılı. Duraklarla ilgili hazırladığı ikinci kitabı ve sovyet metro istasyonları üzerine yaptığı çalışmayı da satın alacağım.

[Becca · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful picture book full of photos of old Soviet bus stops - bits of cold war architecture that stand out because of the architects' and designers' abilities to infuse some personality in the design, while surrounded by cold, brutalist architecture. The journey covers most of the old Soviet bloc countries but not Russia. I found out after finishing the book that there is a part 2, there must be photos from Russia in that one. Great little picture book if you like design, architecture, history, or different cultures.

[Daniel Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is magnificent. Apparently Soviet architects were allowed a lot of individuality in designing bus stops, meaning that this is an eclectic collection reflecting local building materials, regional styles and cultures, and the features of life in the different areas. This includes bus stops from most of the Soviet Republics (from what I can tell, only Azerbaijan and Russia itself are not included). It is really amazing to see just how many designs people came up with.

[Stefan Videnov · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's fascinating that a book on a topic as weird as this one woke such an interest in me. I found it extraordinarily thrilling to imagine the design process behind the showcased art pieces. My only gripe is that in addition to the very interesting foreword, I would've liked to see some form of analysis.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strong introduction that explains why he started photographing these quirky bus stops in the ex republics of the Soviet Union and also an article explaining the role of the humble bus pavilion in Soviet architecture.

Fantastic photography grouped by country, so you can look for local themes. Beautifully published by Fuel.

A book to come back to and there are others in the series…

[Tracy]

A wide range of shapes and materials, bold colors, and patterned mosaics. The shapes are playful, often asymmetrical, an interesting mix of Brutalist and organic forms, some almost Googie-esque. Some are impractical, others unrecognizable as bus stops to my eye. Very brief text introduction then gets right to the photography, which is my preference.

[Hansel5 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Learned about this from a documentary film at the 2024 ADFF. The film showed Herwig's mission to documents a many bus stops as possible before they are lost forever.

The book featured great photography of these beautiful and whimsical structures. Enjoyed it,

[Julene · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a fun picture book! Can we have like... 10 follow-ups? I know the material is out there!!

[gabrielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is just a delightful book. (It made me a bit restless.)

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not normally into this sort of book but this is brilliant : takes a subject about which I knew nothing and makes it both informative and beautiful.

[Gareth Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title tells you what you are going to see. It’s a fascinating book; a varied collection of bus stops from peripheral soviet states. Strangely wonderful.