Ivan Rupeš

Wherever the Boot of a Russian Soldier

As dreams of carving up the world among a handful of strongmen seem back in fashion, I revisited a site in Europe still carrying marks from previous bouts of imperial fever. Ralsko is a small Czech town with a long military history. As years and empires rolled by, Austrian, Czechoslovak and Nazi troops all trained in the area. Following the Soviet invasion in 1968, the Russians brought their jet fuel and nuclear warheads. Then the Berlin Wall fell, the warheads left, but the fuel stayed, spilled underground.  A massive cleanup delivered some spectacular results. But then the politicians’ interest waned and today you can clearly see the line where the money ran out. Beyond, abandoned Soviet-style apartment blocks are being slowly reclaimed by the forest. There is an old Czech saying: Wherever the boot of a Russian soldier treads, the grass doesn’t grow for 100 years. Roaming what should have never been, I am happy to report that after 30-odd years, it does.

Ivan Rupeš is a Toronto-based documentary photographer. In his work Rupeš examines complexities of the human relationship with the environment. He is especially drawn to probing the nuances and ironies of the ways humans affect their habitat and the ways it affects them back. Rupeš was born in what is now Czechia. He started out as a biomedical researcher whose career brought him first to the USA and then to Canada. Currently, he takes on projects both in Canada and around the world.

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Contact:  info@ivanrupes.com  
Website:  http://ivanrupes.com
IG: @ivanrupes

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