Balkhash (2011-2012)
All the photographers were taken in the Sary-Shagan Polygon by Lake Balkhash located in South-Eastern Kazakhstan between in 2011 and 2012. The Sary-Shagan Polygon, used mainly for the development of anti-ballistic missiles during the Soviet era, is now mostly abandoned, leaving a number of empty buildings on the barren steppe by the lake. However, as of 2011-2012, some people remained in the mostly-abandoned polygon. While groups of people frequently paid visit to the territory of the former polygons for some days to collect scrap metal, I even met a few families living in the abandoned military barracks, making a living by fishing and selling scrap metal from the abandoned buildings. I visited one of the families several times and photographed them around the lake and their abandoned barrack in the steppe.The collection of the pictures are the landscape and people of the forlorn place, of which Soviet legacy is (or was already) soon to be decomposed by metal scrappers and be forgotten forever.
