bucharest, 1990. people are queuing at the mihai eminescu bookstore to buy newly published books from humanitas, one of the first publishing houses in post-communist romania. (source: după ‘90, a photo-documentary project of everyday life in 90s romania)
i love this photo so much. it’s undated but likely taken only a few months after the december 1989 revolution and the fall of ceaușescu’s dictatorship. a few months before, these people were sitting in similar queues for hours hoping to buy food and would often go home empty-handed in the end. the regime had full control over what got published, over what you were and weren’t allowed to watch, listen to, talk about, joke about, laugh about. some of the first things humanitas published immediately after it was founded in february 1990 were books and authors previously banned under communism. life was still shit in a lot of ways in the early 90s. we were still poor and beyond that you can’t just shake off decades of brutality and collective trauma like it’s nothing. but people were queuing up to buy books like they had been queuing up to buy bread after they had been starving in more ways than one. i love this photo to tears.
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