“From 1988 to 2001, groups of Russian weapons inspectors were stationed at the Hercules Aerospace plant in Magna, Utah. After the inspectors left, their guardhouses were removed from the plant and transported to Wendover, Utah. They now stand empty and deprived of their original context, forlorn Soviet islands in the Utah salt desert.” – Lewis Colborn
Lewis and I were both on residencies last summer at the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Wendover, Utah. Lewis was working on a project that dealt with these transplanted guardhouses, which you can see on his website here. I stopped by to take a look and made the pictures below.
The guardhouses had been fully functioning surveillance units, kitted out for both espionage and residence. They’d been shipped over from Russia in entirety, from the formica to the siding to the oven. Seeing them was an eyeful: on a remote, decaying former American air force base, these two Soviet time capsules sit, beached.
Below is selection of then-and-now comparisons.
[pix by imagineering]
February 4, 2008 at 12:04 am
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