Totally wired: a photographer traces Moscow’s hidden connections

When American photographer and legal consultant Garrett Pappas first moved to Moscow he was overwhelmed by the number of wires that criss-crossed the city. They connected apartment buildings, flower kiosks and traffic signs, intruding into every one of his photographic compositions. Eventually, he decided that perhaps the wires were worthy of their own project. The result is Moscow is Wired, a series of photos that explore a city "both energised and weighed down by a web of cables, cords and wires that, strangely, go unnoticed by many of its inhabitants". "The word 'wired' itself contains many meanings: feverishly energetic; configured with a certain mentality or outlook; connected to an electrical device; and, in the most literal sense, clad with wires," says Pappas, whose photographic debut was held in a Moscow gallery in 2012. "Moscow is all of these things: it is a city in a rush, often blind to itself, struggling to modernise and shed a past that seems more distant yet inescapable every year. And the wires are still there."