Closed Cities by Gregor Sailer | Tyrol (AUT)

The phrase 'closed city' was a term originally coined for restricted soviet settlements that remained off the radar and removed from any maps until the beginning of the century. Using the idea of a closed or restricted space as his starting point, Austrian photographer Gregor Sailer began his Closed Cities photo series in 2009 and travelled to areas sealed off by politically and geographically hostile landscapes.

The Closed Cities book, designed by Manuel Radde, documents images from regions in Siberia, Azerbaijan, Qatar, Chile, Algeria/Western Sahara and Argentina. Although no people appear in Sailer's photographs the shots are mainly taken in inhabited urban zones such as private residential areas, military sites and refugee camps. The series contains traces of everyday existence that undo the sparse and desolate nature of Sailer's imagery; if you look closely you can see laundry hanging outside concrete desert shelters and graffiti sprawled across the communal eating area of a factory.

Towards the back of the book sits a map that identifies the cities by their respective function; Diamond City, Refugee City, Oil City, Gas City, Copper City and Gated New Town alongside three short essays written by Margit Zuckriegl, Walter Moser and Wencke Hertzsch. The essays discuss Sailer's photography as a form of investigative art and also examine the sociology behind closed living.