Removed from their context, the strange concrete monuments dotting the landscape of the former Yugoslavia can seem abstract, inscrutable, even “alien.” Called “Spomeniks” after the Serbo-Croatian word for “monument,” the massive sculptures were virtually unknown to the rest of the world before photographer Jan Kempenaers documented them with these striking photographs between 2006 – 2009.

With renewed interest came the spread of misinformation, as some claimed the monuments were Communist propaganda. But in truth, they weren’t displays of patriotic nationalism; they each commemorated specific local events, often antifascist uprisings by local citizens. Though many of them were built by and for the victims of fascist regimes, they’re often seen online alongside Nazi monuments with no references to their true meaning.

Now, artists and activists from the countries that formerly made up Yugoslavia are fighting to clear up those misconceptions, and it’s important that we listen, says author Owen Hatherly at the Calvert Journal in a piece called “Concrete Clickbait.” 

In many cases, the monuments were commissioned, funded and chosen locally, and their aesthetic reflects a shift in Yugoslavia towards an interest in modernism. In an age of rising international neofascism, these monuments have much to tell us, argues Hatherly, and “deserve better than to be glimpsed for a few seconds on Tumblr.”

“For Tihana Pupovac, a major problem is also the depoliticized framing of the monuments. Left without any indication of what they commemorate, or even of who designed them, the results are ‘deliberately oblivious’ to the anti-fascist struggle that they commemorate, or to why the artists and communities thought they were appropriate – which, once, they evidently did. ‘If we want to revive whatever we think can be found of politics in the aesthetic of these monuments, we have to go past nostalgia and past the sheer fascination.”

“Because, again, these monuments in themselves are not that unique, what was unique was the lived historical experience of socialism. And I think this is what lacks crucially from Kempenaers’ work. You can see this in the way he presents his work in former Yugoslavia and his total oblivion of the problem of anticommunism. And this makes him incapable of grasping the situation with these monuments today’, which in Croatia, is currently acute, not only with many of the monuments crumbling, but with a right-wing administration openly nostalgic towards the Ustaše and intent on burying whatever anti-fascist legacy might remain today.”

Erasing the context of the monuments also erases the scale of the atrocities that occurred in Yugoslavia, activists argue.

“’Yugoslavia was the fourth highest country in Europe in terms of civilian casualties’ during the Second World War [says Pupovac], and was also, along with Greece, the only country with a resistance movement – the multi-ethnic, Communist-dominated Partisans – that was large and strong enough to liberate the country almost without help from the Allies. The federal Yugoslavia that came out of this broke with Stalin and the USSR in 1948, and instituted a ‘self-management socialism’ of extreme complexity and decentralization.”

“This is what disappears in the Spomenik photos – as she puts it, ‘our lived historical experience of a revolution becomes only a cultural artefact’. [Architect and writer Dubravka] Sekulic argues that ‘a better way to engage with these monuments would be to use them as a tool to re-connect to the near past in which, as a society, we did not see space only as a commodity.’”

Read more about the meaning and history behind specific monuments at The Calvert Journal.

Top: Spomenik #1 (Podgarić); all images by Jan Kempenaers

Gone up in flames and burned down to the ground – these 10 well-known statues, monuments and large-scale advertisements all fell to fire, if not fury.

“I like big fat men like you,” stated Eli Wallach’s character “Tuco” character in the 1966 film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, “when they fall they make more noise. And sometimes they never get up.”  The bandit’s brash insult was prophetic in a way: big statues and monuments (fat or not) often meet their demise rather spectacularly.

Unlike the film’s doomed Union Army sergeant, however, these fallen statues fell in the most dramatic way possible – covered in flames. Take “Big Tex”, a 52-ft tall statue and marketing icon who, for 60 mainly uneventful years, proudly stood at the State Fair of Texas in Dallas.

Big Tex underwent a series of renovations and improvements over the years, including the installation of an interior electric fan to puff out his western shirt. On the 2012 State Fair of Texas’ final weekend, a short-circuit in the fan’s electrical panel mounted inside Big Tex’s boot sparked a blaze that consumed the iconic statue in minutes flat.

Flickr member greychr was at the State Fair on October 19th, 2012 when the original Big Tex enjoyed a last “smoke”. By the way, Big Tex would rise again – a slightly larger (and presumably more fireproof) version was erected in time for the 2013 State Fair of Texas. Puffy shirt provided by Jerry Seinfeld.

Frazee’s “Big Tom” Turkey

Frazee, Minnesota is proud of its turkey farms and associated businesses, and the feeling is mutual. As such, a committee representing these stakeholders collected $20,000 in seed money and in 1986 the World’s Largest Turkey, dubbed “Big Tom“, took its place in the town square.

The 22-foot-tall statue rapidly wore out its welcome in Frazee, however, as it was easily damaged and repairs were costly. In 1998 a replacement turkey statue was commissioned. The original Big Tom wasn’t about to leave without a fight, though. As workers wielded a cutting torch to remove the statue’s wings, the body caught fire and the hungry flames quickly gobbled up the monument. Pity it wasn’t a statue of a giant green bean casserole, but we digress. Big Tom’s 20-foot-tall fiberglass replacement has thus far resisted the urge for immolation.

From Touchdown to Terminator

The Solid Rock Church in Monroe, Ohio, is a so-called megachurch with over 4,000 members, thus raising roughly $250,000 to commission the 62-ft-tall “King Of Kings” statue in 2004 was no big deal.

The resulting statue (dubbed “Touchdown Jesus” by detractors) featured a steel armature covered in styrofoam and finished off with a thin fiberglass “skin”. All was well until a severe thunderstorm struck the Monroe area on June 14th of 2010. During the storm, a bolt of lightning struck the statue, set the flammable styrofoam alight, and left only the spindly steel “skeleton” intact.

Naturally, those same detractors dubbed the remains “Terminator Jesus“. Mourn not, ye faithful… the Solid Rock Church’s Jesus statue was resurrected as “Lux Mundi”, sans the “touchdown” arms, and was dedicated in September of 2012.

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Deep in the most remote reaches of the former Soviet Union, strange skyscrapers glitter against the sky, made all the more out of place by their sleepy rural settings and lack of similarly scaled surroundings. Photographer Frank Herfort calls them ‘Imperial Pomp,’ monstrous and overly ostentatious structures that sprung up throughout the nation and the former Soviet Union in the decades since the collapse of the USSR. Traveling to places that might not otherwise draw many foreign visitors, Herfort captured the skyscrapers in all their strangely proportioned glamour for his photo book ‘Imperial Pomp – Post Soviet High-Rise.’

“After exploring Moscow’s structures I realized, that in all cities and former Soviet countries you can find such buildings,” says Herfort. “So I traveled to Vladivostok, to Blagoveshchensk on the Chinese border on River Amur, to Astana in Kazakhstan, to Baku in Azerbaijan, to Sochi and to St. Petersburg. And everywhere in between. I was always impressed by these huge constructions while driving through Moscow. Moscow doesn’t have a big skyline or big houses in the cityscape, and then I was even more impressed when suddenly there appeared one of these big new colored buildings. They are standing like single flowers cropped in the landscape.”

The German photographer notes that he feels like the buildings are “used to manipulate the humans and try to make them feel small.” He says the buildings rarely have infrastructure or real access built around them to invite the public to experience and interact with them, because they weren’t built with a care for anything other than showing off. That would certainly fit with the American perspective on Russia and its strongman fascination.

The buildings do feel like modern iterations of the strange Soviet-era monuments that still litter much of the former Soviet Union, though they’re nowhere near as creative and sculptural as the wondrous and bizarre relics of what used to be Yugoslavia.

Herfort’s book is out of stock at the publisher’s website, but a few copies are still available on Amazon, and you can see more of his work at his website.

These extraordinary war monuments stand out from the crowd in commemorating those who have fallen while performing their duty in the service of their country.

Memorial Day was formerly known as “Decoration Day” and was traditionally celebrated on May 30th – a date upon which no major battles had been fought. Memorial Day differs from Veterans Day in that the latter honors veterans of war. We lead off with a unique war memorial designed to fulfill its mission, as it were, on only one day every year: November 11th, at 11:11am, no less. The Anthem Veterans Memorial in suburban Phoenix, Arizona, was dedicated in 2012. The monument’s white stones, red bricks and blue sky reflect the colors of the American flag.

The Anthem Veterans Memorial consists of five staggered stone pillars signifying the five branches of the United States military. Designer Renee Palmer-Jones precisely aligned the pillars so that at 11:11am on November 11th, the sun’s rays pass through elliptical cutouts in the five pillars. The sunlight spotlights a mosaic of The Great Seal of the United States set into the red-bricked Circle of Honor.

Soldierstone Memorial

Most people have neither seen nor even heard of Soldierstone… and that’s just as the memorial’s creator, the late Stuart Allen Beckley, intended. The retired Army lieutenant colonel and Vietnam veteran sought to pay tribute to the uncredited people who assisted foreign soldiers over many decades of war in Southeast Asia.

Secreted in a clearing deep in Colorado’s 1.8-million-acre Rio Grande National Forest at 10,000 feet above sea level, Soldierstone‘s central 10-ft-tall monument bears quotes engraved in Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian and French – the languages of America’s allies through thirty years of fighting. Flickr user MJM1977 visited the memorial on July 24th of 2014.

Polar Bear Monument

The Polar Bear Monument in Troy, Michigan, commemorates fallen soldiers of the North Russian Expeditionary Forces. About 75 percent of the 5,500 Americans sent to Archangel, Russia as part of the post-WWI Allied Intervention were from the Detroit area and called themselves the “Polar Bears”.

96 soldiers were KIA in Russia and in 1929; the remains of 56 were recovered and subsequently interred on this site on May 30th of 1930. Flickr user Jazz Guy (flickr4jazz) visited the Polar Bear Memorial on May 2nd, 2011.

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Perhaps we’ll never know what it was like land on a Greek Island and gaze up at the long-lost Colossus of Rhodes, one of the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, but there are many other amazingly old monumental statues still standing. From the world’s oldest-known colossal sculpture in the sands of Egypt to a 500-year-old mountain god spewing water and smoke in Italy, these 7 wonders take the human figure (and sometimes, human/animal hybrids) to incredible heights.

Leshan Giant Buddha, China

Carved right out of a cliff face at the confluence of three rivers in the southern Sichuan province of China, the Leshan Giant Buddha stands 233 feet tall from its plinth to the top of its head, making it the largest stone Buddha in the world. Construction began in the year 713, led by a Chinese monk named Hai Tong, who dedicated it to calming the often-rough waters for shipping vessels. He was so dedicated to the project, he reportedly gauged his own eyes out when funding was threatened. But after his death, the money ran out, and construction was stalled for 70 years before his disciples breathed new life into the project. In the end, Hai Tong’s wishes were fulfilled: all the rock that was chipped away from the cliff face fell into the water below, altering the currents and making them safe for passing ships. Today, it’s part of the UNESCO-protected Mount Emei Scenic Area, which also includes 1,000-year-old trees and over 30 temples.

Moai of Easter Island

Carved by the Rapa Nui people between 1250 and 1500 C.E., the Moai monolithic human figures of Easter Island all feature massively oversized heads, with the largest measuring 33 feet in height. The heaviest one is shorter but squatter, weighing in at 86 tons. Exactly how the statues were made and transported is still somewhat of a mystery, as the tallest would have measured 69 feet in height if it had ever been completed. While many people erroneously call them the ‘Easter Island Heads,’ they’re actually full bodies, often partially buried beneath the soil with intentionally exaggerated proportions. More than 900 of them have been located on the island, and most of them are made from a compressed volcanic ash. Their empty eye sockets once held eyes made of coral with pupils made of black obsidian or red scoria.

Appennine Colossus, Italy

The youngest statue on this list is notable not just for its striking looks, but the fact that it contains several hidden rooms hiding the cool functions that bring it to life. Carved in the late 1500s by Italian sculptor Giambologna as a symbol of Italy’s Apennine Mountains, the ‘mountain god’ stands 35 feet tall over the grounds of the Villa di Pratolino in Tuscany. One of its interior rooms enables water to pass out of the monster in the god’s hand, which pours like a fountain into the body of water below, and another holds a fireplace so smoke can emerge from his nostrils.

Tirthankara Jain Sculptures of India

The Jain sculptures in Gwalior, an important city in Madhya Pradesh, India, are cut into the rock faces leading up to the 8th century Gwalior fort. Dating back to the 15th century, the statues depict Tirthankaras, or Teaching Gods, which are worshipped by followers of Jainism. 21 temples are cut into the rock on the southern side, with the tallest idol at 58 feet representing Rishabhanatha or Adinatha, the first Tirthankara.

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