desymbol: This Canadian Photographer Captures The Unique Designs Of Soviet-Era Bus Stops

Christopher Herwig is a Canadian photographer who has been documenting the bizarre and unique Soviet-era bus stops since the early 2000s. The man says that the project began rather unexpectedly during his long-distance bike ride from London to St. Petersburg back in 2002. During the 1,800-mile ride, Christopher challenged himself to snap a photo every hour and soon began to notice the uniquely-designed bus stops on seemingly abandoned stretches of road. They inspired him to start the Soviet Bus Stops project and over the next few years, the photographer traveled over 18,000 miles in 14 different countries documenting the most unique bus stop designs he could find.

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Canadian photographer Christopher Herwig has been documenting unique Soviet-era bus stop designs since the early 2000s

Christopher has his own thoughts on why the bus stop designs are all so unique. “The local bus stop proved to be fertile ground for local artistic experimentation in the Soviet period, and was built seemingly without design restrictions or budgetary concerns,” explained the photographer. “The result is an astonishing variety of styles and types across the region, from the strictest Brutalism to exuberant whimsy.”

During his travels, the photographer visited many countries of the Eastern Bloc, including the ‘stans (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, and more.

In 2015, Christopher published a collection of his photos in a photo book titled Soviet Bus Stops and it sold out like hotcakes. If you’d like to get a copy of the book yourself, you can purchase one here!

After the success of his first book, Christopher returned to the former Soviet Union once again in search of even more unique bus stops. He drove over 9,000 miles all across Russia and published his second book back in 2017. You can find it here!