




My observations during walks



























































































I took a few photographs during a fire in a building in central Minsk. I tried not to get in the way of the emergency responders, and I did not want to breathe smoke for long, so I did not stay there and soon moved on.
I think these photographs convey the contrast between a warm summer evening and the tension of an emergency situation.



















I saw this pictogram in an underground passage and felt all of its pain.

Honestly, I don’t know how to draw it better. I haven’t looked into the details or researched how signs like this are designed around the world. But what I see here scares me more than it reassures me.
There is a staircase here. These jagged steps are very prominent, very active. There is a wheelchair user on some kind of surface. But it is unclear how this surface is supposed to move along the steps, and why this movement should create any sense of safety.
I’m not saying the pictogram needs to show the entire mechanism. But it should contain at least the idea of smooth movement. Here, it doesn’t. The eye does not move upward with the platform. It trips over the steps.
The arrows look strange, too. They seem to live in a world of their own. It is unclear what exactly they are explaining. If the sign is located below, inside the passage, then the downward arrow no longer makes sense. The task is not to go even lower, but to get back up. Yes, I understand that there is standardization and that there are standard templates. But the standard should follow the meaning, not the other way around.
Formally, this pictogram has everything. Stairs. A wheelchair. Some kind of platform. Arrows. The logic seems to be assembled. But the meaning gets lost.
A pictogram of this kind should be a saving symbol. A sign that a person’s problem has been solved here. But this pictogram does not solve the problem. It creates a new puzzle. Where should this person go? What will move? How does it work? Is this person supposed to overcome this staircase?
I look at it and see not accessibility, but a barrier. Not “you will be lifted,” but “here are the stairs, good luck.”
This is a small scene of tension, not a sign of help.
Before it got dark, I decided to take a walk through the microworld.
This is my first experience like this, and I already really like it. I got stuck near some tiny white and yellow flowers, literally on ten centimeters of ground. But in macro, it is no longer ten centimeters. It is a whole little city square: the flowers stand in different ways, some in pairs, somewhere there is a blade of grass, somewhere gaps between them, somewhere light.
It felt like I had looked into a small world that had been right here all along.




