Kosmos; A Portrait of the Russian space age

Adam Bartos (Photographer), and Deb Wood (Designer New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. 176 pages. Illustrations (color). Essay by Svetlana Boym. Notes. Catalogue (picture identifications) on pages 101-109). Reference collection stamp on top edge. No other markings noted. DJ has noticeable sticker residue. The photographs in this work were taken between June 1995 and April 1999. Native New Yorker Adam Bartos has been photographing since he was a teenager and creates photographs suffused with a quiet calm. He cites William Eggleston--known for his intensely colored images of ordinary scenes--and the earlier photographers Timothy O'Sullivan and Carleton Watkins--both known for their unique documents of the changing American landscape--as primary influences, Bartos focuses on the contemporary landscape. Yet, in his images, time seems to stand still, lending them an aura of temporal dislocation. In the early 1970s he attended film school at New York University and began working with color photography. He was mentored independently by the photographer Evelyn Hofer, known for her serene and meticulous color compositions. Bartos published perhaps his best-known work--photographs illustrating the effects of time on the modernist United Nations building in New York after fifty years of use--in the book International Territory: The United Nations, 1945-95, 1995. In 2001 he published Kosmos: A Portrait of the Russian Space Age, photographs of the "obsolescent future" of the Soviet space program. The Space Race was an exhilarating moment in history, alternately frightening, thrilling, awe-inspiring, and ultimately, sublime. Its most enigmatic element was the competition. The Soviets seemed less technologically sophisticated but in fact won many of the races: first satellite to orbit the earth; first man in space; first unmanned landings on Mars, Venus, and the Moon; first woman in space; most powerful rockets; and, until its recent fiery death, the most long-lived space station to name but a few. The inherent contradictions of the age--the mixture of technologies high and low, of nostalgia and progress, of pathos and promise--are revealed in Kosmos, Adam Bartos's astonishing photographic survey of the Soviet space program. Bartos' fascination with this subject led him to seek out places like the bedroom where Yuri Gagarian slept the night before his history-making flight into space, located in the Baiknour Cosmodrome, the one-time top-secret space complex in the Kazakh desert. Bartos also takes us inside the cockpit of the Merkur space capsule, used to ferry crew members and supplies to the super-secret Almaz orbital space stations, and behind the changing screens cosmonauts used before being fitted for their space suits at Zvezda, the chief manufacturer of Soviet life-support systems. In total, Kosmos presents over 100 of Bartos's photographs, rich with the incongruities of the history, science, culture, and politics of the Space Age. Professor Svetlana Boym's insightful introduction to the technological and cultural aspects of Soviet space exploration provides a fitting context for the photographs. For anyone interested in the space age, Kosmos is an essential and fascinating portrait. Condition: Very good / Good.

Keywords: Pictorial works, Space Age, Astronautics, Cosmonauts, Spaceflight, Spacecraft, Space suit, Launch Vehicle, Assembly, Tsiolkovsky, Malevich, Fedorov, Gargarin, Svyatoslav Lavrov, Soyuz, Maximov, Vetrov, Zvezda, Sergei Korolev

ISBN: 1568983085

[Book #73641]

Price: $75.00

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