Window-Shopping Through the Iron Curtain

About the Author David Hlynsky is Senior Lecturer in Arts, Culture and Media at the University of Toronto. He is founding editor of the alternative photography magazine Image Nation (1973–83), and the author of Baggage and Salvage. Product Description 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 Hlynsky’s own account of his time as a fl�neur in the shopping plazas behind the Iron Curtain. Table of Contents Artist’s Statement (David Hlynsky) • Introduction: What Was it Like to Shop in these Streets? (David Hlynsky) • The Windows (photographs of c. 160 shop windows) • Stops Along the Way: David Hlynsky’s Communist (and Decommunizing) Shop Windows (essay by Martha Langford) • The Next Thing You Buy (essay by Jody Berland) Review 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 From the Back Cover ?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 fl�neur in the shopping plazas behind the Iron Curtain.