The eerie beauty of Cold War infrastructure

Thankfully, the Cold War didn't come to its feared conclusion of nuclear Armageddon. But the Soviet Union was certainly prepared for it, and the evidence lives on.

Photographer Nadav Kander was researching a project on Russian cities when Google Earth alerted him to the existence of two "closed" sites on the border of Kazakhstan and Russia. Kander, who subsequently embarked on a three-year survey, learned the sites were called Priozersk and Kurchatov. The once-restricted military zones did not even appear on maps until well after the Cold War's end. That's because Priozersk and Kurchatov had been testing sites for long-distance missiles and atomic bombs, respectively. The end of the world could well have begun right here.

But it's not all so dark! Kander's book, Dust (Hatje Cantz), features eerie yet beautiful images of these remnants of war, serving as reminders of what could have been, and thankfully wasn't. See a small selection of the work below:

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