Window-Shopping Through the Iron Curtain - Rilegato

Hlynsky, David

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0500252114 ISBN 13: 9780500252116

Casa editrice: Thames & Hudson, 2015

Riassunto

Window-Shopping through the Iron Curtain presents a selection of more than 100 images of shop windows shot by David Hlynsky during four trips taken between 1986 and 1990 to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, East Germany, and Moscow. Using a Hasselblad camera, Hlynsky captured the slow, routine moments of daily life on the streets and in the shop windows of crumbling Communist countries.The resulting images could be still-lifes representing the intersection of a Communist ideology and a consumerist, Capitalist tool—the shop window—with the consumer stuck in the middle. Devoid of overt branding or calculated seduction, the shop windows were typically adorned with traditional yet incongruous symbols of cheer: homey lace curtains, paper flowers, painted butterflies, and pictures of happy children. Some windows were humble in their simple offerings of loaves and tinned fishes; others were zanily artistic, as in the modular display of military shirts in a Moscow storefront; and some illustrated intense professional pride, such as a sign in a Prague beauty salon depicting a pedicurist smiling fiendishly over an imperfect sole.The photographs are accompanied by essays by art historian Martha Langford and cultural studies specialist Jody Berland, as well as Hlynsky’s own account of his time as a flâneur in the shopping plazas of the collapsing Soviet empire—“a vast ad-hoc museum of a failing utopia” that in 1989 began to close forever.

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Recensione:

In 170 photos, Hlynsky's book portrays a colourful and almost childlike world now absent. --GUP Magazine

The fascination of David Hlynsky's images of economic sobriety is that they come from the historical equivalent of an alternative universe ... It is the bizarre and incongruous meeting of opposites, as western-style goods like soft drinks and hamburgers are juxtaposed with colourless Marxist austerity, that makes these photos so surreal. --The Guardian

The pictures reveal a world without enterprise ... almost 30 years ago. --Daily Mail

A fascinating view of an old era of consumerism that began to crumble with the Berlin Wall in 1989. --Independent

Poignantly, [Hlynsky] remarks that the West's own windows have now changed too, with the closure of many small shops on our High Streets, all replaced by large chains, both East and West united in consumerism. Perhaps it is time for us all to record the shop fronts in our own cities. --bbc.co.uk

...offers a unique glimpse into everyday life behind the Iron Curtain. --British Airways High Life Magazine

Dalla quarta di copertina:

The book presents 170 images, mainly shop window displays, shot by artist David Hlynsky during the final years of the collapsing Soviet empire in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, East Germany and Moscow, using a Hasselblad camera to capture the slow, undramatic moments of daily life on the streets. The photographs are accompanied by essays by art historian Martha Langford and cultural studies specialist Jody Berland, as well as Hlynskys own account of his time as a flâneur in the shopping plazas behind the Iron Curtain.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Thames & Hudson
• Data di pubblicazione: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0500252114
• ISBN 13: 9780500252116
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero edizione: 1
• Numero di pagine: 208