Spomenik: Super-Sized Monuments To Eastern Bloc Futurism

The Communists liked concrete. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, they shaped concrete into huge monuments to their age. These skyward-pointing footprints were heralds to the go-ahead future of communist emulation. Nowadays these giant structures are neglected follies. Jan Kempenaers focuses on them in his book Spomenik, curating what he photographed in the former Yugoslavia and The Balkans.

Kempenaers did not set out as a documentary photographer, but first and foremost as an artist seeking to create a new image. An image so powerful that it engulfs the viewer. He allows the viewer to enjoy the melancholy beauty of the Spomeniks, but in so doing, forces us to take a position on a social issue” – Willem Jan Neutelings

 

 

Crack 2:

These structures were commissioned by former Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito in the 1960s and 70s to commemorate sites where WWII battles took place (like Tjentište, Kozara and Kadinjača), or where concentration camps stood (like Jasenovac and Niš). They were designed by different sculptors (Dušan Džamonja, Vojin Bakić, Miodrag Živković, Jordan and Iskra Grabul, to name a few) and architects (Bogdan Bogdanović, Gradimir Medaković…), conveying powerful visual impact to show the confidence and strength of the Socialist Republic. In the 1980s, these monuments attracted millions of visitors per year, especially young pioneers for their “patriotic education.” After the Republic dissolved in early 1990s, they were completely abandoned, and their symbolic meanings were forever lost.