Book review: The Valley of the Shadow – The Photography of Miron Zownir

The Valley of the Shadow – The Photography of Miron Zownir (available on Amazon UK and USA.)

Publisher Gestalten writes: The Valley of the Shadow is a collection of photography by Miron Zownir that documents a world of unconditional authenticity, dire ecstasy, and demonical possession that exists in the shadows of urban areas in New York, Berlin, and post-Communist Eastern Europe. As controversial as they are uncompromising and poetic, Zownir’s expressionistic black and white portraits capture the morbid dignity of society’s misfits, freaks, and the homeless.
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Since the 1970s, the radical eye of photographer Miron Zownir has captured the worlds that exist in the shadows of urban areas in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, and post-Communist Eastern Europe. His Expressionistic black and white portraits capture the morbid dignity of misfits, the homeless, freaks, and whores that exists somewhere between self-determination and self-destruction, desolation and personal obsession.

Miron Zownir, Berlin, 2007

Miron Zownir, Berlin, 2006

This book won’t cheer you up if you’re feeling disenchanted with life but it will certainly transport you to another universe.

Miron Zownir‘s b&w photos document the existence and habits of the people who live -voluntarily or not- at the margin of society. The junkie, the ageing punk, the drunk, the freak, the stray dog, the farmer in a Bulgarian city that time forgot, the aficionado of s&m parties, the cripple, the transvestite, the transexual, even the corpse. Zownir mixes these shots with images that portray his vision of religion, another parallel world made of penitents in procession, and frantic women visiting Lourdes in search of a miracle.

Everywhere he looks, the photographer encounters full on desperation and provocation. The images i found most painful to watch were those showing the shocking poverty in the streets of Moscow in the mid 90s.

No text overkill. There are almost 4 pages of introduction and off you go…