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East of Nowhere
Fabio Ponzio, Herta Müller
£38.00
An extraordinary body of photography capturing the poignancy and universality of everyday lives in Central and Eastern Europe before and after the fall of the Berlin wall, with a foreword by Nobel Prize recipient Herta Müller
Overview
In 1987 Fabio Ponzio decided to embark on a photographic odyssey in search of Eastern Europe. When he arrived in Poland the country was on the verge of collapse. There was little food in the shops and the queues to buy bread were immense. In Ceausescu’s Romania, people’s lives were reduced to a succession of dark days; the Securitate wielded absolute control and used informants, bribery and violence to beat any instinct for freedom out of individuals. In the same period, in Yugoslavia, the beginnings of what was to become the catastrophe of successive years were being laid out, while the West looked on in supreme indifference.
In the autumn of 1989, everything changed. The various regimes of the communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe began to collapse in Budapest, Berlin, Warsaw, Prague, Sofia and Bucharest in a domino effect that continued in Albania and ended two years later in the Soviet Union. Ponzio continued his travels across an immense territory with a Leica, three Nikons and 100 rolls of film, in search of the people of the East, documenting the old energy that had been fortified through pain and sacrifice, now joined by a new energy, full of hope.
Year after year, Ponzio returned to capture the many faces and stark differences of the other Europe, in search of the elements that make up the shared destiny of the peoples of Eastern Europe. Collected here are his stunning portraits of their traditions and faith, humility and courage, vulnerability and survival, introduced by Herta Müller, the novelist, poet, essayist and recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Reviews
'[In these photographs] elegance frames a respect for seeing time pass – the stillness, the waiting – hoping to be filled with the promise of an unknown future'
Susan Meiselas
'An odyssey around remote parts of central and eastern Europe'
Observer
'Filled with a vibrant, timeless energy … an expansive documentation of turbulent times, yet sprinkled throughout are moments of joy and pleasure'
Aperture
Product Information
Book Details
Format: Hardback
Size: 27.5 x 21.4 cm
Extent: 160 pp
Illustrations: 80
Publication date: 2 April 2020
ISBN: 9780500545201
Contents List
Foreword by Herta Müller • Introduction by Fabio Ponzio • East of Nowhere: Plates • Biography
About the Author
Fabio Ponzio was born in Milan in 1959. His interest in photography began in 1976, during a trip to the Balkans. Europe, travel and photography have formed the three main threads of his life in the decades since. In 1991, he was awarded the European Kodak Prize at Arles; in 1993, the Mother Jones Foundation Award for Documentary Photography; and in 1998, the Leica Oskar Barnack Award in Germany.
