In the country Belarus, local officials have since the 80's, commissioned artists to paint murals onto bus stops. Photographer Alexandra Soldatova has captured some of this art in her photo series "It Must Be Beautiful".
We tend to think of bus stops as utilitarian pieces of public infrastructure, but in the eastern European country of Belarus, they're works of art. Pretty birds, sunflowers, and glistening sunsets adorn their concrete walls — emblematic, photographer Alexandra Soldatova says, of the Belarussian desire to have everything looking "neat, clean, and beautiful."
Soldatova photographed the bus stops for her series It Must Be Beautiful. She told Hyperallergic that the paintings first began appearing in the 1980s, when local officials commissioned artists to embellish the structures. Their motifs vary from region to region; flowers grace the ones around the eastern town of Orsha, while idealized landscapes dominate those along the southern road of Zitkovich Turov.
