By the end of the 19th century a new genre of printed book emerged. Narrative function was transferred from the text to the photograph. Throughout the 20th century, albums, brochures, and photobooks kept track of the tumultuous history of our region. For the last two decades photobooks have attracted academic attention and have by now been often discussed by numerous publications and exhibitions. They have been featured at several shows, represented primarily by German or Russian publications; however, there have been no attempts as yet to look at this issue in the context of our region. In order to be able to think in terms of such a broad panorama it was necessary to collect and analyse Central European photobooks within the frameworks of one international research project, which culminated in this exhibition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Photobloc<\/em>\u00a0is the first comprehensive and critically aware exhibition addressing the tumultuous history of Central Europe as illustrated by albums, artist books and propaganda publications. A broad international perspective paints a picture of shared fate of inhabitants of this part of the continent. More than a hundred books from Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania illustrate how photography reflected the processes of formulation of new identity of societies and young states of Central Europe, shaping their image, ideology, dreams of modernization and the future.<\/p>\n Photobooks offer an intriguing and still partly undiscovered field for all those interested in graphic arts, photography, politics, and art. The genre offers works ranging from albums of artistic photography by authors such as the Czech master Franti\u0161ek Drtikol, a renowned Polish photographer Edward Hartwig, a Romanian Hedy L\u00f6ffler, to poignant collections of documentary photography. Together, they form a cohesive, cognitively inspiring story of the past and present of Central Europe.<\/p>\n \n The narrative of the exhibition is divided into six thematic chapters. It takes the viewer through the 20th century from the moment when the first mass printed photobooks were issued, through the period of revived and newly formed states, the trauma of another world war and wide-scale modernization that intersected with reproduced propaganda images of mass suffering and death. The display also featured publications documenting everyday life, social \u00a0processes and attitudes in the 1960s and \u201870s up to the present day, as well as the era of political, cultural, and technological transformation.<\/p>\n