Robin Graubard’s new book documents life across Eastern Europe in the 90s

In her debut photo book, Road to Nowhere, Graubard offers a roving view of conflict, resilience and romance following the collapse of the USSR

Published by Loose Joints, US photographer Robin Graubard’s diaristic debut photo book, Road to Nowhere, pinballs around Eastern Europe throughout the 1990s, following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.

Road to Nowhere comprises largely unseen photographs taken between 1992 and 1996, though the design and sequencing avoid indicating the time or place of each shot as the book unfolds. It makes for a disorientating experience that appropriately symbolises the period and Graubard’s ostensibly hectic route through the region, with the background to the photographs given only at the end.

Photograph of people walking onto a bus with factory buildings in the background from Robin Graubard book Road to Nowhere
All images © Robin Graubard, 2022, courtesy Loose Joints
Photograph of two children outside from Robin Graubard book Road to Nowhere

“I set up a base in Prague as it felt safe,” Graubard writes in the book. “I stayed for three years, working in former Yugoslavia, Albania, Russia, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, and Hungary. I photographed the war in Yugoslavia, oil smuggling in Romania, runaways and orphans living in train station tunnels in Bucharest, and a school for girls in Prague.”

For large chunks of Road to Nowhere, the picture is overwhelmingly bleak. Most startling of all are the photographs of children: homeless, gun-toting, bloodied or disfigured by injury. These sit uncomfortably with perfectly everyday scenes of other young people who, by no other logic than luck, are able to maintain a semblance of normality at that moment in time, as they perform daily chores, attend rock concerts and play arcade games.

Photograph of a person looking out from a tunnel from Robin Graubard book Road to Nowhere
Photograph of children in an orphanage from Robin Graubard book Road to Nowhere

Having been immersed in the countercultural scenes of her native New York in the 60s and 70s, Graubard seems to have been drawn back to capturing hedonistic moments and emergent subcultures during her vast travels across Eastern Europe.

Those slivers of unconscious joy are flanked by images of conflict and deprivation, the highs and lows each presented matter-of-factly as a document of the era. Graubard’s photographic and written record of the post-Soviet 1990s is frank and unembellished, leaving the potent, head-on gaze of the people in the images to do the talking.

Photograph of the word 'hell' spraypainted onto a window from Robin Graubard book Road to Nowhere Photograph of people standing in the street from Robin Graubard book Road to Nowhere

Photograph of a man in the street holding a chicken from Robin Graubard book Road to Nowhere
Photograph of young people at a concert from Robin Graubard book Road to Nowhere
Photograph of a young person leaning out of a train window from Robin Graubard book Road to Nowhere

Road to Nowhere by Robin Graubard is published by Loose Joints in April; loosejoints.biz