Gil Pasternak: Guest Editor Special Edition: Photography & Culture

In June 2019 Gil Pasternak published a guest-edited special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Photography & Culture under the title “Photography in Transitioning European Communist and Post-Communist Histories” (2019, vol. 12, no. 2). Registering and studying the distinct characteristics of late- and post-communist political photographic cultures in the former Eastern Bloc and “Eastern Europe”, the special issue endeavours to develop their historically informed and socially conscious study. Contributors to the issue consider case studies from some of the most politically and culturally diverse states in the region, including Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic and Slovakia since 1993), the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), East and unified Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Russia. Some space is also given to photography from Slovenia (formerly one of six socialist republics in Yugoslavia), as a means to account for part of Southeastern Europe’s historical association with the Eastern Bloc, and for the (separate yet ideologically related) communist legacies shared by the majority of Eastern and Southeastern European countries.