An unusually intimate, close-quarters account of daily life in postwar communist countries.
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Communism(s): A Cold War Album presents over one hundred and twenty black and white photographs—nearly all previously unpublished.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, and edited and designed by The Deadbeat Club's Clint Woodside.
Arthur Grace (born 1947) is an American photojournalist, documentary photographer, and author whose work spanning fifty years in photography is noted for its in-depth focus on Americana.
Arthur Grace began his professional career in 1973 as a staff photographer for United Press International. During his award-winning career in photojournalism spanning three decades, he covered stories around the globe as a contract photographer for Time magazine and a staff photographer for Newsweek magazine. His photographs have appeared in leading publications worldwide, including on the covers of Life, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, Paris Match and Stern.
Arthur Grace has published several critically praised photographic books
. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums in the United States and abroad including the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian, the
Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and solo show at the International Center of Photography in New York and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. His photographs are in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the J. Paul Getty Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the High Museum of Art, the International Center of Photography, the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the National Museum of American History, among others. His color photojournalism archives are housed at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas in Austin.
