Zupagrafika is an independent publisher, author of award-winning books and kits, such as: ‘Brutal London’, ‘Brutal East or, ‘Baboshka’. The design studio founded by David Navarro and Martyna Sobecka created yet another beautiful and captivating book – “Eastern Blocks”. A decade ago, the artistic duo set up a photographic journey through the cities of former Eastern Bloc and beyond. They captured ‘sleeping districts’ of Moscow, Plattenbauten of East Berlin, modernist estates of Warsaw or Kyiv`s Brezhnevki. Although these are home to the large numbers of city dwellers, post-war suburbs of central and eastern Europe have been invisible for decades.
The book contains over 100 photographs taken by Zupagrafika throughout the last decade as a reference archive for their illustrated books and kits, with special contributions by local photographers. Divided into six chapters, Eastern Blocks includes a foreword by writer and journalist Christopher Beanland, maps, index of architects and texts on the featured cities and constructions.
Eastern Blocks invites readers to explore the districts and peripheries that became a playground for mass housing development after WW2, including objects like houses ‘on chicken legs’, Soviet ‘flying saucers’ or hammer-shaped tower blocks.
‘The Iron Curtain was understood in the West as The Concrete Curtain.
Everything behind it was perceived as mass produced and grey’
from the foreword by Christopher Beanland
Eastern Blocks. Concrete Landscapes of the Former Eastern Bloc
Author: Zupagrafika
Contributors: David Navarro & Martyna Sobecka (Zupagrafika): photography, texts and edition
Alexander Veryovkin: commissioned photography
Balázs Csizik: commissioned photography
Christopher Beanland: foreword
Copyright for all images © Zupagrafika, 2019
