Lucia Nimcova was twelve when the East Bloc ceased to exist. She now is seeking to discover what influence growing up within the communist system had on her. Through visual research she hopes to expose the form and structure of daily life under communism. She visited her birthplace, the Slovakian town of Humenné, and in the Regional Cultural Centre there found a photo archive of cultural events. The photographs in it were conspicuous for their indifference, having, for instance, little concern for composition and exposure. The person who made the photos was Jurai Kammer. Nimcova decided to photograph all the current cultural events in the same manner. She saw new façades, streets and sports complexes, but to her surprise still saw the same townspeople and interiors. The façade may have changed, but the community remained the same. Everyone still conformed to their role and the prime concern was still fitting smoothly into the larger whole. In Humenné the primary legacy of the communist era proved to be apathy.

Lucia Nimcova (b. Czechoslovakia, 1977) has been a student at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam since 2007. Official and Unofficial will appear in 2008 as separate but coordinated books.