Fotograf Magazine

In 2000, the Belgian photographer Annemie Augustijns (born 1965), a graduate in photography and cinema of the Institut Saint- Luc de Bruxelles, started traveling with her large-format camera across the various Central and East European countries which seventeen years ago liberated themselves from Communist totalitarian regimes, and have since become new members of the European Union: Poland, the former GDR, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. Like a peculiar kind of archeologist, she seeks out places which had once been the pride of the socialist states. In particular, those buildings which complied to perfection with the ideological and aesthetic requirements of those formerly in power, and which frequently won awards at architecture competitions: trade union recreational facilities, hotels, schools, houses of culture, theaters, museums. Places that have survived the massive onslaught of radically different present-day global architectural styles, and that are now becoming open-air museums of Communism.