Ostalgia

Ost ['ᴐst], German, noun: East
Algos [álgos], Ancient greek, noun: pain

Ostalgia is a photographic series developed for over 2 years. It was born in the wake of a documentation work for the Museum of Architecture in Vienna. I was a photographer in a research team set up by the Museum whose mission was to locate and study the official Soviet architecture promoted in its 15 satellite republics between 1960 and 1990. The series is a subjective catalogue of monumental buildings that testify to a past of heroic intentions, but which reach the present completely eroded with disappointment. They were icons of success and progress and, therefore, complicit in political propaganda and the dynamics of legitimization of a totalitarian ideology. Houses of Culture of the Trade Unions, Houses of Culture of the Socialist Pioneers, Congress Centers of the Workers, Lenin Palaces, Circuses and Sports Palaces, Museums, Memorials and Mausoleums…