Arthur Grace: Communism(s): A Cold War Album

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The Cold War is just a distant memory for many, and practically a blank slate for anyone born after 1980. For most people in the West, the realities of life behind the Iron Curtain have faded into caricatures of police state repression and bread lines. With the world seemingly again divided between democracies and authoritarian regimes, it is essential that we understand the reality of life in the Soviet Bloc. Photojournalist Arthur Grace was uniquely placed to provide that context. During the 1970's and 1980's, 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. Many of the photographs in this remarkable book are effectively psychological portraits that leave the viewer with a sense of the gamut of emotions in that era. Mr. Grace's extensive photographic archive of this highly charged period is the basis for his new book, COMMUNISM(S): A COLD WAR ALBUM. Illustrated with over one hundred and twenty black and white images - nearly all previously unpublished, COMMUNISM(S) gives an unprecedented glimpse behind the veil of a not-so-distant time filled with harsh realities unseen by nearly all but those that lived through it. Shot in the USSR, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, and the German Democratic Republic, Mr. 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, or basically anything still in stock at the butcher shop. COMMUNISM(S) thought-provoking photographs expand and enlighten our view of the history of this period while serving as a graphic reminder of an era we seem destined to repeat.