soviet

Wax Paper Photography: Getting the Large Format Look With a $300 Soviet Camera

Anyone who has trawled through a historic photo archive knows the feeling of spotting a large-format photo. Like spotting a beautiful woman in a crowd, it’s hard to drag your eyes away. That depth and clarity, which seems to top reality itself, has only ever been possible with a film plane measured in inches rather than millimeters.

Photographer Uncovers the Soviet Underworld Below Tbilisi, Georgia

Beneath the streets of Tbilisi lies a network of tunnels, bomb shelters, and Soviet-era chambers that many locals know nothing about. Over the past several months, photographer David Tabagari has been exploring this silent underworld with extraordinary results.

‘Russian Vivian Maier’ Becomes a Star 20 Years After Her Death

80 photographs shot by Masha Ivashintsova that are on display from December 4 in Tallinn, Estonia. The retrospective is the first of its kind since Asya Ivashintsova-Melkumyan stumbled on 30,000 forgotten photographs taken by her mother that capture a poetic outsider's view of life in the Soviet Union.

Experiments in Antique USSR Film

Want to hear a communist joke? Well, they are only really funny if everyone gets them, but if you still want to hear it, then Soviet: A worker standing in a liquor line says: “I have had enough, save my place, I am going to shoot Gorbachev.” Two hours later he returns to claim his place in line. His friends ask, “Did you get him?” “No, the line there was even longer than the line here.”

Photos Inside the Ruins of Luxurious Soviet Spas and Sanatoria

The Soviet Utopia: sending your hard-working state citizens on a health holiday to one of the empire's many sanatoria. Originally conceived in the 1920s, these USSR sanatoria offered a combination of health and medical benefits alongside thermal baths and spas. These institutions were once among the most innovative buildings of that era.

The Forgotten Photographer of Soviet Uzbekistan

As Central Asia was transformed under Soviet rule, one man made a remarkable record of life in the fledgling Uzbek S.S.R. before being driven from his career and toward tragedy.

You Can Browse 437 Complete Issues of ‘Soviet Photo’ Magazine Online

This is really cool. It turns out you can browse through full issues of the old Soviet Photo (AKA "Советское фото") magazine online at Archive.org. Fans of photography history will love this treasure trove, which contains 437 digitized issues originally published between 1926 and 1991.

Swirly Bokeh for Cheap: Shooting with a $40 Vintage Soviet Lens

Photographer Manuel Ortiz went out and did something many of us have been considering a lot lately: he bought himself a cheap, vintage Soviet lens. And now, we get to join him to see how this awesome old portrait lens performs when it's attached to the very modern Sony A7R II.

This Soviet 1,100mm Lens is Basically a Telescope with a Camera Mount

Ever wanted to strap a portable telescope to the end of your camera and carry it around? With the soviet-made MTO 1000A 1,100mm f/10.5 mirror lens, you can just about do it. A monster of a lens, Christopher Frost Photography put it through its paces for one of his Weird Lens Reviews.

Space Enthusiasts Find Missing ’71 Soviet Lander Using Mars Orbiter Images

It turns out that the sharing of images taken by orbiters and rovers in space may have more of a purpose than just being cool to look at. According to a NASA press release published last Thursday, a group of amateur Russian space enthusiasts may have found a missing soviet Mars lander using nothing more than images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.