Window Shopping Behind the Iron Curtain

Three loaves of bread in a Krakow window in Poland. 1988.



David Hlynsky's "Window-Shopping through the Iron Curtain" charts one photographer's travels in Moscow, Krakow, Budapest, Prague and other Eastern Bloc cities from 1986 to 1990, through the medium of the shop window.



Read the full story:

Fascinating World of Iron Curtain Shop Windows

Hlynsky's shots are simple, the shop windows basic, half empty, sometimes kitschy.



Yugoslavia. 1989

"I have about 8,000 pictures from that period ... but over the years I've found that the store windows are the things that people are surprised by the most," said Hlynsky.



Moscow. Meat shop. 1990.

Hlynsky hasn't returned to Moscow since the Berlin wall fell. He remembers clean streets, few homeless people, and a slower pace of life.



Moscow. 1990.

The windows are a glimpse into the state economy where the Western world of advertising was far, far away.



Prague. Pedicures. 1988.

Hlynsky developed his own theories about the windows.



"It's obvious, for example, that some products in some windows were arranged more lovingly than others," he writes in the introduction to the book. "Consider these windows as still life art projects performed in the psychological and financial space between the State and the native shopper."



Moscow. 1990. Uniforms.

Unlike the West, he writes, "the windows were devoid of calculated sexual seduction. But they were adorned with traditional yet incongruous signs of general cheer: paper flowers and butterflies, mushrooms, leaves, happy children. Some were amusing."



Budapest. 1989.

Hlynsky says there were different reactions to his photos: The younger generation saw them as quaint, whereas the older generation are moved to tears.



Moscow. 1990.

David Hlynsky's "Window-Shopping Through the Iron Curtain" is published by Thames & Hudson and is available at amazon.com.



Moscow 1990.

"I mainly focus on the idea that banal photographs are very, very important to human culture. The dramatic photographs can be dramatic or contrived or out of the ordinary, but the banal photographs really tell us what's happening," said Hlynsky iwho is now a senior lecturer in the Arts, Culture and Media department at the University of Toronto Scarborough.



Krakow, Poland. Small shoes with vase. 1989