There are a few people in David Hlynsky's quirky streetscape photographs from behind the Iron Curtain, but only a few — people are not really his point. Hlynsky focuses instead on shop windows, with their tenderly awkward displays of clothing, plumbing supplies, pastries, toys, canned fish and books.
Hlynsky grew up in the American Midwest and now lives in Toronto. Between 1986 and 1990 he traveled extensively in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, where he took about 8,000 street photographs. He has collected more than 100 of these images in "Window-Shopping Through the Iron Curtain."
"In a cityscape largely without commercial seduction, the banality of the shop windows underscored a real cultural difference between East and West," he writes in the introduction.
It's true; nobody would mistake these windows for displays in London, or Paris, or Minneapolis. The colors are garish, the arrangements Spartan and often clumsy. Sometimes there are only one or two items in the window, as though that might be all the store has on hand. Space is taken up with a sad-looking vase of plastic flowers, or an elaborate swoosh of drapery. Everything looks both overly bright and covered in dust.
How does one market successfully in a Communist economy? Why bother to make consumer goods appealing when there is no competition? Perhaps there is no need. These shop windows are informative, but they are not seductive.
And to those of us living in this consumer-driven society, that in itself is fascinating.
Laurie Hertzel is the Star Tribune senior editor for books. On Twitter: @StribBooks
