Author(s): David Hlynsky

Design

The book presents 170 images, mainly shop window displays, shot by artist David Hlynsky during the final years of the collapsing Soviet empire in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, East Germany and Moscow, using a Hasselblad camera to capture the slow, undramatic moments of daily life on the streets. The photographs are accompanied by essays by art historian Martha Langford and cultural studies specialist Jody Berland, as well as Hlynskys own account of his time as a flaneur in the shopping plazas behind the Iron Curtain.

With images that at a glance look like the 1950s, it’s incredible that many of these photographs reflect the shop displays of the 90s. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the lifting of the curtain and an increasing global economy it’s unlikely that such great examples of display, typography and retailing exist now. A wonderful reminder of what the visual differences were between East and West. For a New Zealand comparison, have a look at Steve Braunias and Peter Black’s The Shops. If you’re lucky you may have a shop like some of these just round the corner. There’s good ’bad’ design everywhere once you start looking. 

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