LOST RUSSIA: Photographing the Ruins of Russian...

LOST RUSSIA: Photographing the Ruins of Russian Architecture by William Craft Brumfield (Duke University Press: $27.95; 132 pp., paperback original). Revolution, war, vandalism and neglect have reduced many of the finest examples of Imperial Russian architecture to crumbling ruins. The economic crisis in the former Soviet Union and the concomitant decline in the value of the ruble make the restoration of these monasteries, palaces and villas improbable. Brumfield’s exceptional sepia images of disintegrating monuments bathed in silvery Northern light have a haunting, elegiac beauty.