Photobloc. Central Europe in Photobooks

The uniqueness of Central European photobooks is situated at the intersection of artistic ambition and propaganda, grand narratives of history and small enclaves of freedom. The books we present tell the history of the region through photographs, but are themselves also documents of changing social relations, political visions and the responsibilities of photography and art. An important clue is provided by intriguing local dissimilarities, such as the great Czech school of modernist photography or the Polish print publications of the 1980s. The publication was created on the occasion of the exhibition Fotoblok. Central Europe in Photobooks presented at the ICC Gallery from 22 November 2019 to 1 March 2020.

The English-language book is an attempt to create a canon of Central European photobooks and the first such comprehensive Polish study to synthesise knowledge about them. The book includes essays by Poland’s best experts on the subject – Łukasz Gorczyca and Adam Mazur, a text by Thomas Wiegand analysing the propaganda use of photobooks in the GDR, and a sketch by Adriana Dumitran devoted to one of the most interesting figures in 20th century Romanian photography – Heda Löffler.