Noorderlicht

Behind Walls

Eastern Europe before 1989

main exhibition / 7 sep 26 oct 2008

Gábor Attalai

• IDIOTIC SYSTEM (Hungary, 1971-1976)

  With his successive self-portraits the Hungarian art photographer Gábor Attalai symbolically illustrates the madness of functioning in a communist system. According to Attalai, the standard situation in communist countries was characterised by a suffocating lack of freedom and the ideological 'dialogue' that communist regimes tried to enter into with their subjects. Because of the one-sided nature of this supposed 'dialogue' it was perforce doomed to failure. In any case, the regimes were not interested in the views of the citizens; they sought only to impose their own concepts as the truth. Anyone in a communist state who did not want to be driven crazy had to act as though he was insane, says Attalai.
  

  

• IDIOTIC SYSTEM (Hungary, 1971-1976)

  

• IDIOTIC SYSTEM (Hungary, 1971-1976)

  

Svetlana Bahchevanova

• THE UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER (Bulgaria, 1950-1956)

  Before the Soviets occupied Bulgaria in 1944, at the most only the richest Bulgarians had a photo camera. After the occupation began the communists took control of public visual communication. Photography was allocated a central place in the propaganda machine. The images of THE UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER, found in the garbage in 1990, show how an anonymous photographer did what was expected of him. Idyllic images of modern workers and public parades predominate. Group portraits emphasise solidarity. Even in the case of activities involving one or two persons, several more workers are depicted. People posed in their Sunday best. Everything went to create an image as perfect as it was empty, while the atrocities that really took place, such as mass murders and work camps, went undocumented.

  

• THE UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER (Bulgaria, 1950-1956)

  

• THE UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER (Bulgaria, 1950-1956)

  

• THE UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER (Bulgaria, 1950-1956)

  

• THE UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER (Bulgaria, 1950-1956)

  

Andrzej Baturo

• TO BECOME A SOLDIER (Poland, 1970-1979)

  In the 1970s Andrzej Baturo worked as a photojournalist for the Polish media. For those who were sensitive to what they were seeing, his photo stories became reports on the inhumanity of the communist system. His To Become a Soldier is an example. In it one can see how recruits to the Polish army were deprived of their basic human dignity. Baturo was able to do the photographs under the pretence of working on a different subject. In the 1970s he sought to publish the series in an independent Polish magazine. Only the photograph in which a group of soldiers stand rigidly at attention in a line made it past the censors. In order to subtly indicate to the readers that the rest of the series was rejected, the editors provided the sole photograph published with the headline 'A Report on the Army'. Exhibiting the photographs was unthinkable.

  

• TO BECOME A SOLDIER (Poland, 1970-1979)

  

• TO BECOME A SOLDIER (Poland, 1970-1979)

  

• TO BECOME A SOLDIER (Poland, 1970-1979)

  

• TO BECOME A SOLDIER (Poland, 1970-1979)

  

Michal Cala

• SILESIA (Poland, 1978-1979)

  
  
  The 1970s were the apogee for mining and the steel industry in Poland. Micha¸ Ca¸a became fascinated with the landscape that this industry produced in Silesia. The smoking chimneys, sombre mining towns and mountains of industrial waste offered a panorama as threatening as it was surrealistic. The immense pollution that these antiquated industries caused was then already a regular component in the communist landscape. Photographing industrial facilities was the equivalent of spying, and Ca¸a was once arrested for taking a photograph of a mountain of coal, but because his car, in which many exposed rolls of film lay, was not searched he got off with 24 hours in jail. Ca¸a made his photographs from a critical stance. He saw the intimidating scale of this industry, compared to the isolated worker, as a metaphor for the communist reality.

  

• SILESIA (Poland, 1978-1979)

  

• SILESIA (Poland, 1978-1979)

  

• SILESIA (Poland, 1978-1979)

  

• SILESIA (Poland, 1978-1979)

  

Natasha & Valera Cherkashin

• PRAGUE'S PICKNICK (Czechoslovakia, 1968)

  1968 was also a year of hope and change for the Eastern Bloc. The Russian leader Khrushchev had let go of the reins and and hippies and their values cautiously made their appearance even behind the Iron Curtain. In Czechoslovakia the Prague Spring was the symbol of the desire for liberation. In this period of a relative relaxation of repression the Czechoslovakian capital hummed with rumors. Everything was possible in the West; consumer goods were cheap and abundant, unemployment relief was higher than salaries in the East. The authorities turned a blind eye to contacts with the West through literature and radio broadcasts. But within the same year Soviet tanks put an end to the revival. All that was left were the photographs of the 'Prague Picknick', a performance about that short-lived sense of freedom which had flared up in 1968.

  

• PRAGUE'S PICKNICK (Czechoslovakia, 1968)

  

• PRAGUE'S PICKNICK (Czechoslovakia, 1968)

  

• PRAGUE'S PICKNICK (Czechoslovakia, 1968)

  

• PRAGUE'S PICKNICK (Czechoslovakia, 1968)

  

Krzysztof Cichosz

• POST-REPORT (Poland, 1981-1985)

  
  
  In the early 1980s, with his collages of existing photographs Krzysztof Cichosz created his own personal protest against the political developments in Poland. The results focused on the most important events of that day, such as the massive protests against the totalitarian regime, the imprisonment of the most important opposition leaders, and the deaths of the defiant shipyard workers. Cichosz filled the photos with his own symbolism. For instance, he excised sections as a reference to the disappearance of arrested opposition leaders. He called the series 'Po-reportaz', or literally 'after-reports'. Although Cichosz already won an important Polish photography prize with the series in 1981, they, like all critical photographs, could not at first be shown. That was permitted only in 1985, when the communist regime relaxed the reins somewhat.

  

• POST-REPORT (Poland, 1981-1985)

  

• POST-REPORT (Poland, 1981-1985)

  

Füles (József Tóth)

• ADVERTISING PHOTOGRAPHS (Hungary, 1962-1970)

  All Hungarians know what füles means - literally 'somebody with big ears' or 'to give somebody a smack up alongside the head'. And everybody knows that this is the sobriquet of the photographer József Tóth, whose advertisements embellished many Hungarian posters and magazines in the 1960s and '70s. These involved Western style advertising commissioned by the state. They exhorted people to buy brand-name products which were however at the most only produced for the export market. In Hungary itself they referred to a non-existent market, since a choice among different brands was not possible there. Internally the idea was to work up public interest in a particular type of product. For instance, ads for Golden Smart super-long cigarettes were intended to whet an appetite for their no-filter proletarian substitute. The optimism exuded by the photos was also supposed to make people forget about the absence of the Western products which were so much better than what was available.

  

• ADVERTISING PHOTOGRAPHS (Hungary, 1962-1970)

  

• ADVERTISING PHOTOGRAPHS (Hungary, 1962-1970)

  

• ADVERTISING PHOTOGRAPHS (Hungary, 1962-1970)

  

• Advertising Photographs

  

Ion Grigorescu

• ELECTORAL MEETING (Romania, 1975)

  In communist Romania state-managed electoral meetings were the order of the day. Under the oversight of the feared secret police citizens had to testify to their adherence to the regime. Ion Grigorescu secretly photographed one of these meetings, organised on March 6, 1975. The results are especially revealing of the mechanism behind these demonstrations. The combination of the crowd, bewildered but docile, and the individual members of the secret police, created an absurd spectacle, lacking every form of spontaneity. These senseless and mechanical actions had no other purpose than to be a setting for role playing, imposed by a system of discrete but ruthless oppression.

  

• ELECTORAL MEETING (Romania, 1975)

  

• ELECTORAL MEETING (Romania, 1975)

  

• ELECTORAL MEETING (Romania, 1975)

  

• ELECTORAL MEETING (Romania, 1975)

  

Aulehla Gustav

• THE WAY WE WERE (Czechoslovakia, 1963-1982)

  Gustav Aulehla meticulously documented ordinary life in Czechoslovakia, photographing the cafés, orphanages, funerals and party meetings in Krnov, the town where he lived. As a chronicler of his time, Aulehla sought to observe, before all else. As an observer, he had a sharp eye for the contrast between socialist rhetoric and the cheerless realitiy. His photos of the extensive Soviet army base that was located in Krnov led to his being interrogated and having his house searched by the secret police. He was jailed once, but later freed as a result of an amnesty proclamation. He was able to keep his photographs hidden. Only once - in 1984, in the Czech city of Ostrava - did he organise a small exhibition of his work.

  

• THE WAY WE WERE (Czechoslovakia, 1963-1982)

  

• THE WAY WE WERE (Czechoslovakia, 1963-1982)

  

• THE WAY WE WERE (Czechoslovakia, 1963-1982)

  

• THE WAY WE WERE (Czechoslovakia, 1963-1982)

  

Jiri Hanke

• VIEWS FROM THE WINDOW OF MY FLAT (Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic, 1981-2003)

  Between September 10, 1981, and January 10, 2003, at random moments Jiří Hanke took photographs from the window of his apartment. When doing so he always turned his camera on the same point, a street with a pavement on each side, in the city of Kladno, which until 1993 was in Czechoslovakia, and after that in the Czech Republic. Each scene says something about the political climate in which the photograph was made. Hanke also took the photographs at different times of day and in different seasons. Because of this, the average street below his apartment in Kladno becomes a barometer for the everyday life of that city. Ultimately Hanke made 130 photographs from his window.

  

• VIEWS FROM THE WINDOW OF MY FLAT (Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic, 1981-2003)

  

• VIEWS FROM THE WINDOW OF MY FLAT (Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic, 1981-2003)

  

• VIEWS FROM THE WINDOW OF MY FLAT (Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic, 1981-2003)

  

• VIEWS FROM THE WINDOW OF MY FLAT (Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic, 1981-2003)

  

Juraj Kammer

• OFFICIAL (Czechoslovakia, 1981-1989)

  According to good socialist practice, official events in Czechoslovakia were documented photographically. In the town of Humenné that was the job of Juraj Kammer, as the photographer on the payroll of the Regional Cultural Centre. In part because of the repetitive character of the subject, socialist heroism is far from obvious in his work. On the contrary; like the events recorded, his style is boring and uninspired. However, nothing more was asked of Kammer, who discharged his duties faithfully and acknowledges that he was a part of the communist propaganda machine. He felt no call to engage in a critique at the time: 'I was not in the resistance.' He does however insist that his photographs did not paint life under communism as rosier than it was. His apathy about the the events is clearly to be read in the photos.

  

• OFFICIAL (Czechoslovakia, 1981-1989)

  

• OFFICIAL (Czechoslovakia, 1981-1989)

  

• OFFICIAL (Czechoslovakia, 1981-1989)

  

• OFFICIAL (Czechoslovakia, 1981-1989)

  

Gábor Kerekes

• THE PLACE (Hungary, 1970-1980)

  In the 1970s Gábor Kerekes was one of the most prominent photographers in Hungary. His chief sources of inspiration were the absurd vision of the writer Kafka and the post-apocalyptic world (the 'Zone') from the film Stalker by the Russian director Tarkovsky. Kerekes documented the architecture of his country in a bleak, sinister style. According to him, these were images of the nightmare in which he lived. Despite its pessimistic slant, the documentary nature of his work made it difficult for would-be censors to ban it. Kerekes ceased photographing in 1982, tired of working on assignment. He destroyed almost all his photographs and donated the remainder to the Hungarian Museum for Photography. The fall of the communist regime in Hungary meant his rebirth as a photographer.

  

• THE PLACE (Hungary, 1970-1980)

  

• THE PLACE (Hungary, 1970-1980)

  

• THE PLACE (Hungary, 1970-1980)

  

• THE PLACE (Hungary, 1970-1980)

  

Garo Keshishian

• LABOUR TROOPS (Bulgaria, 1981-1994)

  From 1929 to 2000 Bulgaria had what were called Labour Troops. Conscripts in this military-style labour force had to perform heavy labour for a period of two to three years, without salary, and their living conditions were comparable to those in a prison. The conscripts were primarily political dissidents and minority groups such as gypsies and ethnic Turks. In 1981, through a combination of persistence, personal contacts and good luck, Garo Keshishian obtained permission to make a photo series about the Labour Troops. He won the trust of the labourers, and as a result was able to record their daily struggle to maintain their human dignity under inhumane conditions. By maintaining a low profile, he was able to continue to photograph the Labour Troops for thirteen years.

  

• LABOUR TROOPS (Bulgaria, 1981-1994)

  

• LABOUR TROOPS (Bulgaria, 1981-1994)

  

• LABOUR TROOPS (Bulgaria, 1981-1994)

  

• LABOUR TROOPS (Bulgaria, 1981-1994)

  

Janis Knakis

• UNTITLED (Latvia, 1983-1986)

  Janis Knakis produces photographs because he detests language. His experience is that language and words interfere with, and ultimately corrupt reality. For him, the illustration of his thesis, one that outstrips all others, is the effect of propaganda, a phenomenon that penetrated every corner of life in Latvia in the 1980s. Knakis has incorporated his views in a series of dark and surrealistic photographs. These montages were both a protest against and an alternative for the social-realistic visual language that was prescribed by the communists - according to Knakis, 'lords of the age of horror, who imposed their rules everywhere and soaked the colour out of the world.'

  

• UNTITLED (Latvia, 1983-1986)

  

• UNTITLED (Latvia, 1983-1986)

  

• UNTITLED (Latvia, 1983-1986)

  

• UNTITLED (Latvia, 1983-1986)

  

Sergey Kozhemyakin

• THE CHILDISH ALBUM (Belarus, 1989)

  Sergey Kozhemyakin makes new prints from old, frequently damaged negatives that he found in the wastebasket of a cheap photo studio in Minsk. The photos are of children posing in a hotchpotch of Russian clothing styles. The attire ranges from the kokoshnik (a traditional Russian women's head-dress) and uniforms from the Napoleonic era to contemporary military uniforms and insignia. For Kozhemyakin this monotonous succession of children in nationalistic costumes is symbolic of their spiritual situation. Under the totalitarian regime everyone must be alike. Outward appearances came before inner self, and was definitive for actions. In this perspective, the children's photographs are a tiny detail in a great mechanism that was directed toward suffocating the individual.

  

• THE CHILDISH ALBUM (Belarus, 1989)

  

• THE CHILDISH ALBUM (Belarus, 1989)

  

• THE CHILDISH ALBUM (Belarus, 1989)

  

• THE CHILDISH ALBUM (Belarus, 1989)

  

Marian Kucharski

• THE COLLAGES (Poland, 1966-1968)

  Until 1968 Marian Kucharski was a relatively obedient photographer. After that, the threat of new global conflict and the complicity of his homeland in the invasion of Czechoslovakia was too much for him. He changed his style and subjects. He processed his personal memories of the Second World War in experimental, threatening images. The army and technological progress became symbols for the dehumanisation in Poland and in the rest of the world. Kucharski created these images with a new technique. His own negatives were mixed with existing images to create symmetrical photographs which resembled paintings. The result was a critical answer to social realism. Because of their implicit character, at the time the photographs could still be normally exhibited in Poland.

  

• THE COLLAGES (Poland, 1966-1968)

  

• THE COLLAGES (Poland, 1966-1968)

  

• THE COLLAGES (Poland, 1966-1968)

  

• THE COLLAGES (Poland, 1966-1968)

  

Peeter Linnap

• SUMMER 1955 (Estonia, 1955/1993)

  Peeter Linnap made new, life-size prints of old, generally damaged negatives from 1955.
  They show a number of Estonian cadets in Soviet uniforms who are amusing themselves with pistols on an idyllic summer day. From their playful poses, derived from cinema, one can deduce that this is not an official training exercise. The question is whether it went beyond rowdyism. Possibly their actions could be an ironic protest against the occupation of Estonia by the Soviet Union. The photographs were made at the time by Enn Kiiler, Peeter Linnap's father-in-law. Because of their painful associations – Estonians were conscripted into the Soviet Army – SUMMER 1955 was initially exhibited outside Estonia, but not in the country itself. That only happened in 1997.

  

• SUMMER 1955 (Estonia, 1955/1993)

  

• SUMMER 1955 (Estonia, 1955/1993)

  

• SUMMER 1955 (Estonia, 1955/1993)

  

• SUMMER 1955 (Estonia, 1955/1993)

  

Henryk Makarewicz & Wiktor Pental

• 802% ABOVE THE NORM (Poland, 1940-1960)

  In the 1950s, at the dawn of Polish socialism, Nowa Huta was thrown up near Cracow. This new Polish city was to be the manifestation of the socialist ideal. The residents were brought there from rural areas in order to work at the Lenin Steel Works, in an environment full of propaganda. Nowa Huta was the model for the birth of a New Pole. Henryk Makarewicz and Wiktor Pental photographed daily life in Nowa Huta, something which was expressly against the rules. The results landed in a drawer for a half century. Ultimately Nowa Huta would play a large role in the resistance against the communist authorities and as the home base for the labour union Solidarity. Especially a years-long campaign for the construction of a church in the city proved to be the stimulus for national reforms in the late 1960s. The title of the photo series, 802% ABOVE THE NORM is ironic. It refers to the ridiculous production figures that were announced as propaganda. Because of their emphasis on the daily life in Nowa Huta, the photographs could not be shown publicly under communism.

  

• 802% ABOVE THE NORM (Poland, 1940-1960)

  

• 802% ABOVE THE NORM (Poland, 1940-1960)

  

• 802% ABOVE THE NORM (Poland, 1940-1960)

  

• 802% ABOVE THE NORM (Poland, 1940-1960)

  

Barbara Metselaar

• KRATZEN AM BETON (DDR, 1970-1978)

  In the 1960s the young people of East Germany watched how social changes arose from pressures created by their peers all over the world. For them, this created hope that there could be a social revolution in their own land. Despite the isolation imposed by their government and the ban on Western books and magazines, attempts were made to connect up with the international hippy movement. But the period of hope, euphoria and experimentation was short-lived. The authorities did everything in their power to bring the rebellious youth to heel. In only a couple of years the country fell back into its familiar state of paralysis. Barbara Metselaar, at the time one of the East German hippies, photographed the brief flare-up of youthful resistance.

  

• KRATZEN AM BETON (DDR, 1970-1978)

  

• KRATZEN AM BETON (DDR, 1970-1978)

  

• KRATZEN AM BETON (DDR, 1970-1978)

  

• KRATZEN AM BETON (DDR, 1970-1978)

  

Galina Moskaleva

• REMINISCENCES OF CHILDHOOD (Belarus, 1989)

  From her birth to 1960, the year in which she turned seven and her parents divorced, Galina Moskaleva's father photographed the family. In 1988 her father gave the negatives to her as a present. Moskaleva thought of the photographs more as a psychological investigation than as a collection of snapshots. With the aid of the negatives she began a reconstruction of her earlier life. For her, it was not remembering that was central to this process, but rewriting. Communism constructed a past that the contemporary Russian would rather forget. Moskaleva, on the contrary, wants to bring this past to life. To that end she literally revises the images of her childhood by colouring them in and duplicating them. The duplication points to how 'memory is never static, but always in movement'.

  

• REMINISCENCES OF CHILDHOOD (Belarus, 1989)

  

• REMINISCENCES OF CHILDHOOD (Belarus, 1989)

  

• REMINISCENCES OF CHILDHOOD (Belarus, 1989)

  

Dimitar Nestorov

• UNTITLED (Bulgaria, 1986-1989)

  Nude photography was a taboo in communist Bulgaria. Both the authorities and public opinion combined in condemning it. For the former, such photography was capitalist propaganda for the West; for the later it was an unacceptable invasion of the private sphere. Thus it was not easy for the photographer Dimitar Nestorov to find models. For most Bulgarians, recording the naked body was nothing short of provocation. Nestorov drew his inspiration from Western photo magazines with nude portraits, which he encountered at the photography club at the university in Sophia. Making or exhibiting nude photos in public spaces was unthinkable in communist Bulgaria.

  

• UNTITLED (Bulgaria, 1986-1989)

  

• UNTITLED (Bulgaria, 1986-1989)

  

• UNTITLED (Bulgaria, 1986-1989)

  

Andrei Pandele

• GREY DAILY LIFE UNDER COMMUNISM (Romania, 1980s)

  In 1980 the Romanian dictator Ceaucescu planned the construction of an enormous monument to himself in the heart of Bucharest. Andrei Pandele decided to record the historic heart of the city in photographs before it was torn down. Very quickly he saw that the demolition was not the most serious crime afoot: erasing every memory of the pre-communist past was exceeded by the deliberate degradation of millions of Romanians who suffered from hunger and cold. Pandele then decided to focus on the drama of ordinary life in Romania. Photographing it was regarded as 'slandering socialist reality', and was a criminal offence. For instance, a man who had photographed a long queue waiting at a butcher shop was imprisoned for six years. Ultimately Pandele shot more than 1000 rolls of film. He trained himself to photograph in risky situations without looking through the viewfinder. In this way he created a unique report on the surreal life in communist Romania, with which he could only go public after 1993.

  

• GREY DAILY LIFE UNDER COMMUNISM (Romania, 1980s)

  

• GREY DAILY LIFE UNDER COMMUNISM (Romania, 1980s)

  

• GREY DAILY LIFE UNDER COMMUNISM (Romania, 1980s)

  

• GREY DAILY LIFE UNDER COMMUNISM (Romania, 1980s)

  

Uladzimir Parfianok

• PERSONA NON GRATA (Belarus, late 1980s)

  Towards the end of the 1980s the Belarussian Uladzimir Parfianok did portraits of about 25 of his countrymen. These were people who did not fit in the communist system, although they had been born into it and had to function in it. According to Parfianok, the degree to which they literally exposed themselves corresponded to the degree to which they did that figuratively. Most of the photographs were made in the homes of their subjects, without adding any items to the backgrounds. A number of the subjects - such as the man in the gas mask reading the newspaper Sovietskaya Kultura - decided for themselves how they were to be portrayed. Parfianok used an analogue camera and coloured and scratched the photographs by hand. Each result is as unique as the person it records.

  

• PERSONA NON GRATA (Belarus, late 1980s)

  

• PERSONA NON GRATA (Belarus, late 1980s)

  

• PERSONA NON GRATA (Belarus, late 1980s)

  

• PERSONA NON GRATA (Belarus, late 1980s)

  

Jano Pavlík

• ERNEST & ALICIA (Czechoslovakia, 1982-1988)

  In the early 1980s a group of Prague photography students - later famed as the Slovakian New Wave - experimented with staged photography, multiple exposures and the manipulation of negatives and prints. The most original member was Jano Pavlík. He escaped from everyday reality with his frenzied concepts, characterised by feelings of powerlessness and apathy. One of his most famous projects was ERNEST & ALICIA. In this visual novella various models play the same man and woman. Although as archetypical as Adam and Eve, Ernest and Alicia find themselves in anything but a paradise. Ernest is often seen headless in the photographs, and Alicia is presented chiefly as an unattainable object. The underlying themes in this existential work are self-hate, punishment and the desire to escape. Pavlík further drew on the prints with ballpoint pens and felt markers, thus denying the multiple character of photography and giving each print a unique appearance.

  

• ERNEST & ALICIA (Czechoslovakia, 1982-1988)

  

• ERNEST & ALICIA (Czechoslovakia, 1982-1988)

  

• ERNEST & ALICIA (Czechoslovakia, 1982-1988)

  

• ERNEST & ALICIA (Czechoslovakia, 1982-1988)

  

Yevgeniy Pavlov

• THE SEVENTIES (The Ukraine, 1974-1978)

  
  
  Vremya, a collective that practised subversive photography, was formed in the Soviet Union in 1971. Yevgeniy Pavlov was one of its founders. He wanted to shake people awake and shatter taboos with artistic photography. To the Soviet regime photography was exclusively a propaganda tool: officially, art photography did not even exist. Pavlov and his colleagues therefore ran the risk of prosecution for their photographic experiments. Two times Pavlov destroyed his negatives for just that reason. But he found that the freedom that photography offered him more than offset the risks. In his non-conformist images he touched on taboos such as nude photography and metaphysics. A first exhibition of Pavlov's work in 1982 was shut down on orders from the authorities immediately after its opening.

  

• THE SEVENTIES (The Ukraine, 1974-1978)

  

• THE SEVENTIES (The Ukraine, 1974-1978)

  

• THE SEVENTIES (The Ukraine, 1974-1978)

  

• THE SEVENTIES (The Ukraine, 1974-1978)

  

Stano Pekár

• UNTITLED (Czechoslovakia, 1975-1981)

  In Czechoslovakia in the 1970s there was one group who were largely able to avoid the socialist dictatorship: the students. In the shelter of the university campus they dedicated themselves to their own form of collectivism, far away from their harassed elders and the state-regulated society. They looked upon the ever-present politics as an unavoidable form of folklore. The Western souvenirs that students everywhere leave lying around were illustrations of their freer opinions and possibilities. Thus the campus was the place par excellence where the romanticization of the West took shape. Stano Pekár was one of the photographers who documented this youth culture, with the zest for living and outspokenness of his subjects.

  

• UNTITLED (Czechoslovakia, 1975-1981)

  

• UNTITLED (Czechoslovakia, 1975-1981)

  

• UNTITLED (Czechoslovakia, 1975-1981)

  

• UNTITLED (Czechoslovakia, 1975-1981)

  

Erasmus Schröter

• INFRARED NIGHT SHOTS (DDR, 1980-1982)

  The cultural and political climate in East Germany in the early 1980s was stifling. Expressions of art were only permitted if they showed happy citizens single-mindedly working together in constructing the socialist society. With his photo series Infrared Night Shots the East German photographer Erasmus Schröter tried to visualise the sombre mood among the people. Using an infrared camera and invisible flash he photographed people in large, dark spaces - solitary, withdrawn, without direction or perspective. Using this surreptitious technique, Schröter wanted to provide an implicit critique on a state that used similar technology to keep its citizens under surveillance. To avoid censorship, the photographs were only shown to others in the Leipziger Kunsthochschule or in their homes.

  

• INFRARED NIGHT SHOTS (DDR, 1980-1982)

  

• INFRARED NIGHT SHOTS (DDR, 1980-1982)

  

• INFRARED NIGHT SHOTS (DDR, 1980-1982)

  

• INFRARED NIGHT SHOTS (DDR, 1980-1982)

  

Gundula Schulze Eldowy

• ARBEIT (DDR, 1985-1988)

  
  
  According to the state ideology, in the DDR workers had to be portrayed as proud, self-confident heroes. After all, they were the ones who laid the foundation for the new communist society. Gundula Schulze Eldowy wanted to nuance this image. She photographed workers in situations where they were really performing work. In practice, this often meant having to carry out labour in the midst of dust and dirt, with insufficient light. Uncomfortable positions, sometimes alongside heavy machinery, were by no means an exception. Despite the often brutal working conditions, the workers appear unbroken. Their exhausted appearance reveals a resolve to maintain human dignity.

  

• ARBEIT (DDR, 1985-1988)

  

• ARBEIT (DDR, 1985-1988)

  

• ARBEIT (DDR, 1985-1988)

  

Vladimir Shakhlevich

• PORTRAIT FOR THE KOLKHOZ'S BOARD OF HONOR (Belarus, 1980-1989)

  In 1980 Vladimir Shakhlevich photographed the leaders of the Red Banner collective farm. The photographs were intended for an honour roll, and were made close to their homes or in the subject's workplace. The photographs show serious, proud men clad in their neatest clothing. Some wear a medal for their services to labour. A drape is held up behind them, intended to provide a uniform background after the print is cropped. In 1989 Shakhlevich reprinted the photos, without cropping them. Thus one can see where and how the photos were made, and the emphasis shifts to their constructed character.

  

• PORTRAIT FOR THE KOLKHOZ'S BOARD OF HONOR (Belarus, 1980-1989)

  

• PORTRAIT FOR THE KOLKHOZ'S BOARD OF HONOR (Belarus, 1980-1989)

  

• PORTRAIT FOR THE KOLKHOZ'S BOARD OF HONOR (Belarus, 1980-1989)

  

• PORTRAIT FOR THE KOLKHOZ'S BOARD OF HONOR (Belarus, 1980-1989)

  

Vytautas Stanionis

• FESTIVALS (Lithuania, 1957-1959)

  Vytautas Stanionis began his career as a photographer in 1946. His first assignment from the Lithuanian authorities was to do identity photos for the newly introduced Soviet passports. After that he worked as a photojournalist for various Lithuanian newspapers and magazines. In the 1950s and '60s he also published a number of photo books. Stanionis's photos give a picture of post-war Lithuania. The hope of the interbellum years has been exchanged for nostalgia and indifference. The rituals and celebrations that were introduced by the Soviet regime were therefore performed without enthusiasm or with feigned interest. While FESTIVALS was being shot, Lithuanian partisans were still battling against the occupying Russians, who pursued them mercilessly.

  

• FESTIVALS (Lithuania, 1957-1959)

  

• FESTIVALS (Lithuania, 1957-1959)

  

• FESTIVALS (Lithuania, 1957-1959)

  

• FESTIVALS (Lithuania, 1957-1959)

  

Jane Stravs

• 80'S (Yugoslavia, 1982)

  After the death of Marshall Tito in 1980 the cultural climate in Yugoslavia became freer. That opened up the way for underground artists who experimented with video, theatre and music. Jane Stravs, then seventeen, was impressed by the vitality and rebellious attitude of this movement in his homeland of Slovenia, which was then still a part of the Yugoslav federation. From his enthusiasm he recorded the underground scene, without realising he was producing iconic images. For instance, he recorded the first performances of the post-punk band Laibach in 1982, at that time still banned because of its flirtation with fascist symbols. Singer Tomaz Hostnik, the personification of the artistic explosion in Slovenia, took his own life later the same year.

  

• 80'S (Yugoslavia, 1982)

  

• 80'S (Yugoslavia, 1982)

  

Antanas Sutkus

• UNTITLED (Lithuania, 1959-1999)

  When he was still very young, the Lithuanian photographer Antanas Sutkus became acquainted with the cruelty of the communist system. His father committed suicide, his mother fled to the West and left him behind with his grandparents. Nevertheless, as a 'soviet photographer' he had to focus on the sunny life that supposedly was the creation of the communist state. He got around this rule by doing much of his photography in the countryside, where there was less surveillance. The putative allegiance of Lithuania to the Soviet Union also permitted extra latitude, allowing Sutkus to document everyday life in Lithuania, which was anything but sunny. He was also wise enough to never publish or show this work, such as a report on a school for blind children. When his photograph 'Pioneer' won an important Western prize in 1970, complaints to the Central Committee termed him the 'photographing Solzhenitsyn'. Although this title was not without its dangers, Sutkus rapidly became the most famous photographer in his country.

  

• UNTITLED (Lithuania, 1959-1999)

  

• UNTITLED (Lithuania, 1959-1999)

  

• UNTITLED (Lithuania, 1959-1999)

  

• UNTITLED (Lithuania, 1959-1999)

  

Miro Svolík

• ONE BODY ONE SOUL (Czechoslovakia, 1985-1986)

  Along with Jano Pavlík Miro ávolík also belonged to the Slovakian New Wave. This group of young photographers left Slovakia in the 1980s to study at the art academy in Prague. Their free and independent spirit led to wild photographic experiments. They found the staging of photographs, with the aid of friends, a particularly rewarding tool. ávolík opted for a remarkable camera angle in these. By photographing the ground from some distance above it, he could use it as a background for his humorous and highly imaginative visual stories. He provided the results with titles as poetic as they were ironic, such as 'After my death, I went to heaven and from there, I now look down on all of you.'

  

• ONE BODY ONE SOUL (Czechoslovakia, 1985-1986)

  

• ONE BODY ONE SOUL (Czechoslovakia, 1985-1986)

  

• ONE BODY ONE SOUL (Czechoslovakia, 1985-1986)

  

• ONE BODY ONE SOUL (Czechoslovakia, 1985-1986)

  

Lenke Szilágyi

• VIEWPOINT STATION (Hungary, Croatia, 1985-1989)

  In the 1980s Lenke Szilágyi made a name for herself as an idiosyncratic photographer. Although her work appears spontaneous, it is often a record of a performance. The human condition is central to her photography. In sharp black and white contrasts she documents fleeting moments of human existence, almost beyond capturing. The melancholy result emphasises the lonely and forlorn state of the individual. That can easily be seen as implicit critique of life in a system oriented to collectivism. Yet Szilágyi was never consciously a political activist. 'Conflict and dogmatism are alien to my personality,' the photographer has said. 'If I must choose a side, I side with culture and tolerance.'

  

• Viewpoint Station

  

• VIEWPOINT STATION (Hungary, Croatia, 1985-1989)

  

• VIEWPOINT STATION (Hungary, Croatia, 1985-1989)

  

• VIEWPOINT STATION (Hungary, Croatia, 1985-1989)

  

Usha Tsonkova

• HOMAGE TO RODCHENKO (Bulgaria, 1989)

  In the early days of the Soviet Union Alexandr Rodchenko was a prominent figure in the Russian avant-garde. His photo collages and unusual camera angles made him a pioneer in the field of photography. In the 1930s he fell from grace with the Soviet regime. His artistic experiments expressed Soviet ideals less clearly than socialist realism did. Rodchenko began to make more conventional work, such as photo books on party bosses. After his death it appeared that in the books he had blacked out the faces of victims of political purges. Usha Tsonkova took Rodchenko as her inspiration for a series of newspaper clippings and photo copies in which former Bulgarian party bosses have been rendered unrecognisable. The red and white elements suggest the idea of an obituary notice on a bulletin board. HOMAGE TO RODCHENKO critiques the communist system. Still, the series was not banned; because of its abstract nature, the message slipped past the regime.

  

• HOMAGE TO RODCHENKO (Bulgaria, 1989)

  

• HOMAGE TO RODCHENKO (Bulgaria, 1989)

  

Nikola Vucemilovic

• UNTITLED (Yugoslavia, 1955-1965)

  After achieving fame as a partisan and war photographer during the Second World War, in 1947 Nikola Vuãemiloviç began to photograph for the Yugoslav navy. In the years that followed he recorded Yugoslav sea life on the Mediterranean Sea, in the Far East and Africa, and other places. In addition to his official activities, Vuãemiloviç worked autonomously. Nor did he have any problem showing his own work. That can be attributed not only to his position as a navy photographer, but also to the status of photography in Yugoslavia. As an 'applied art' the medium was not of interest to the censors, as opposed to art forms such as film, theatre and literature, which were regarded as creative arts.

  

• UNTITLED (Yugoslavia, 1955-1965)

  

• UNTITLED (Yugoslavia, 1955-1965)

  

• UNTITLED (Yugoslavia, 1955-1965)

  

• UNTITLED (Yugoslavia, 1955-1965)