ABOUT

For political scholars of the period just before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall (1987-1989) the following sites have a special historical resonance.

Lenin Shipyard, Gdansk, Poland; Saint Nicholas Church, Leipzig, East Germany;
Freedom Monument, Riga, Latvia; Vingis Park Song Ground, Vilnius, Lithuania;
Song Festival Grounds, Tallinn, Estonia; Alexander Nevsky Square, Sofia, Bulgaria;
Opera Square, Timisoara, Romania; Freedom Square, Budapest, Hungary;
Wenceslas Square, Prague, Czechoslovakia.

They are sites of significant and often dangerous protest. They are the sites where the fundamental desire for democracy manifested itself. At these sites people of all ages came together to demand political change and an end to communism.

Each country subsequently became a member of the EU, and each location in each country has its own history and its own cultural and political references.

I have visited these sites, shooting them all at dawn, the beginning of a new day and the beginning of a political era. The work is a meditation on the use of public spaces and an investigation of memory, democracy and place.

These sites have even more relevance now in 2023 when many of these countries live in fear of a return to communism.