John Eide

I was on sabbatical fall semester 1990 so I decided to spend three months in Europe. I wanted to explore the central European countries, Czechoslovakia, Hungry, Yugoslavia, that were just opened after the iron curtain came down in late 1989. I want to explore these countries which had been closed to us since before World War II, first because of Nazi occupation and then Russian occupation. I spent almost a month in Prague.

Prague in October I found to be a dark, gloomy place due to both the weather and Central European soft coal which polluted the skies and settled on everything. However, I discovered in the first few hours of the morning there was enough sunlight to photograph in color, so I would walk around the late 1930s apartment buildings in the neighborhood where I was staying. Each building was in a small plot of land that the residents used mostly for gardens.

It seemed to me that these garden spots were used to express a bit of individuality under the communist domination. Some were vegetable gardens, others flower gardens, some just overgrown spaces for people to sit in privacy. I was fascinated by these small, intimate spots that people had carved out for themselves.

While photographing these gardens I realized that the images alone were not enough. I began thinking as I worked of combining these images with text.  When I returned to Portland, I selected the images then created a text to accompany them. 

To see a digital version of the book, please click here. The text on the left was printed on velum,  overlaying the image on the right.