Look inside

During the 1970s and 1980s, photojournalist Arthur Grace traveled extensively behind the Iron Curtain working primarily for news magazines. One of only a small corps of Western photographers with ongoing access to the area, he was able to take the time to delve into the most ordinary corners of people’s daily lives while also covering significant events which unfolded while on assignment. 'Communism(s): A Cold War Album' presents over one hundred and twenty black and white photographs – nearly all previously unpublished.

Shot in the USSR, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, and the German Democratic Republic, Grace’s images reveal an ongoing cat and mouse struggle between State sponsored forces seeking obedience by regimenting mind and body, and their every-day citizens seeking connection to universal humanity in small moments. Here are portraits of factory workers, farmers, churchgoers, vacationers, and loitering teens juxtaposed with the GDR’s imposing Social-Realist-designed apartment blocks, propagandistic annual May Day Parades, Poland’s Solidarity movement and the subsequent imposition of martial law, and the vastness of Moscow’s Red Square contrasted with ever-present public propaganda, communal mineral water vending machines, and endless lines of citizens hoping for an opportunity to buy a cut of meat.

The book’s introduction was written by former 'Time' magazine Warsaw bureau chief Richard Hornik, edited and designed by The Deadbeat Club’s Clint Woodside, and co-edited by Arcana: Books on the Arts’ Lee Kaplan.