Carpet. Blown away. Street photography in the Russian outback.

In many Russian cities, the influence of the east is strong, so in most homes you can see carpets on the walls and on the floor. There's no practical use – only tradition. Moreover, this is not a product of folk crafts - it's an industrial goods, and of synthetic materials.

In the Soviet era, carpets hung on the walls, as it was believed that this helps to keep the heat and also to improve the acoustic properties – to get rid of the echo and reduce the audibility of sounds from neighboring apartments. The inner walls were fantastically thin, because of what in the apartment you could hear absolutely everything that is happening in the neighbors. The simplest solution to the noise isolation problem was carpets that were hung on the wall, laid on the floor and at least partially drowned sounds from neighboring apartments.

In particularly wealthy families carpets were on all four walls, on the floor, as well as on sofas and armchairs, thanks to which the apartment resembles the home of Mongolian nomads.

Today it is believed that the carpet hanging on the wall is a sign of a low culture of everyday life and insufficient welfare of its owner.

Carpets are usually washed in a bathtub and hang around on the balcony, which is why they are often blown away by the wind. This is exactly what I photographed.