Roman Bezjak
Socialist Modernism
€ 19.95
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Roman Bezjak
Socialist Modernism
German, English
2011. 160 pp., 76 ills.
hardcover
25.80 x 31.20 cm
ISBN 978-3-7757-3188-1
Awarded with the international DAM Architectural Book Award 2011
Photographs on the historical architectural culture of eastern Europe’s urban landscapes
Whereas the West encounters the now-fossilized witnesses of planned economies and socialist modernism with skepticism, Roman Bezjak (*1962 in Slovenia) takes an impartial view of communist architecture. After producing prizewinning photo essays for GEO and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, for the past five years the artist has concentrated on traveling through eastern and southeastern Europe. Bezjak used a large-format camera to take photographs of residential buildings, institutions, hotels, and palaces of culture in familiar and foreign places—from Tallinn and Tirana to Dresden and Dnipropetrovsk. His series render a kind of archaeology of postwar modernism without nostalgically glorifying the former East Bloc, for he also makes visible the exploitation of utopia and its entry into everyday life. This publication thus captures a world threatened by demolition, parts of which—such as the Palace of the Republic in Berlin—no longer exist.
Exhibition schedule: Sprengel Museum Hannover, June 22–October 16, 2011 | Robert Morat Gallery, Hamburg, January 21–March 17, 2012
