Paul Raftery - New Dawn For Europe Set of 9 Exhibition Postcards
14.7 x 10.6 cm
 
Featured images:
Lenin Shipyard, Gdansk, Poland
Saint Nicholas Church, Leipzig, East Germany
Freedom Monument, Riga, Latvia
Vingis Park Song Ground, Vilnius, Lithuania
Song Festival Grounds, Tallinn, Estonia
Opera Square, Timisoara, Romania
Freedom Square, Budapest, Hungary
Alexander Nevsky Square, Sofia, Bulgaria
Wenceslas Square, Prague, Czechoslovakia
 
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Over the last three years, since the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Paul Raftery has visited sites of political protest, shooting them all at dawn, the beginning of a new day and the beginning of a political era.
 
Whilst the events differed at every site ­– from protests in Timișoara’s Opera Square to collective singing at Estonia’s Song Festival Grounds – the one thread that combines them is the desire for democracy.
 
Exhibited for the first time in 2022, Raftery’s evocative photographs are a meditation on memory, democracy and place, and how this manifests itself so powerfully in public spaces.
 
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Paul Raftery is a photographer of the built environment with an international reputation who has been shooting around the world for more than 30 years. Following his previous exhibition at Anise Gallery, Berlin Voids, Paul was invited to show the work at the Stiftung Berliner Mauer (Berlin Wall Memorial).
 
His films (made with Dan Lowe) have been shown in numerous galleries and festivals, including the New York Architecture Film Festival and the city’s Gagosian Gallery.