FABIO PONZIO: EAST OF NOWHERE

ABOUT:

East of Nowhere by Fabio Ponzio is a monumental photobook chronicling nearly two decades of travel across Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the former Soviet Union. Through poetic, deeply human black-and-white imagery, Ponzio captures a region in transition—its landscapes, quiet tensions, fragile hopes, and the dignity of the people living through rapid social and political change.

Known for its intimate detail and historical weight, East of Nowhere has become one of the essential documentary photobooks of the post-Soviet era. Ponzio’s analog photographs offer a rare blend of tenderness and realism, making this volume a must-have for collectors and lovers of humanistic photography.

In 1987 Fabio Ponzio decided to embark on a photographic odyssey in search of Eastern Europe. When he arrived in Poland the country was on the verge of collapse. There was little food in the shops and the queues to buy bread were immense. In Ceausescu’s Romania, people’s lives were reduced to a succession of dark days; the Securitate wielded absolute control and used informants, bribery and violence to beat any instinct for freedom out of individuals. In the same period, in Yugoslavia, the beginnings of what was to become the catastrophe of successive years were being laid out, while the West looked on in supreme indifference.

Book Details

• Photographer: Fabio Ponzio

• Title: East of Nowhere

• Publisher: Thames&Hudson

• Format: Hardcover

• Pages: 156

• Photographs: Black-and-white

• Language: English

• Genre: Documentary photography / travel photography / Eastern Europe