This beautiful book mines an ignored aesthetic world: the bus stops across 14 former Soviet states. Colour photographs capture a rich array of roadside halts from Tajikistan to Armenia and from Abkazia to Moldova. What emerges is a challenge to facile western notions of brutalism and utilitarianism in the built environment. An introduction demolishes the idea “rigid aesthetic control” is a “condition of tyrannies”. Images of “roadside punctuation” confront the Soviet cliches many have nursed. From the kalpak-hat stops of Kyrgyzstan to wooden-dacha styles in Estonia, these stops suggest caves, trees, stick creatures, sepulchres and teeth. The dignity Herwig finds in the work of anonymous Soviet men and women backs the claim bus stops as “minor architectural forms” become “bright moments” in remote lives.
