Books

Robin Graubard
Road to nowhere

published by Loose Joints
2022

228pp, 160 × 205 mm, 130 photos
Extended texts by the artist

MALIBU, CA
STRANGE LEGEND

On the beach in Malibu, I met a guitar
player today from Paris in a band called
Strange Legends.

Thich Nhat Hanh passed away while I was
sitting on the beach listening to his meditation
from Plum Village in France, which he founded.
I hear there is trouble brewing in Bosnia
again. Putin has troops on the Ukraine
border. Things seem to go full circle.

I’m currently living down the street from
the house where Joni Mitchell wrote
Ladies of the Canyon and probably Circle
game. Solace.

Thich Nhat Hanh was 95. My dad is 96.
How much time is in a life? It seems like
L.A. is a bit of life on the edge. So many
houses on cliffs - fires, droughts, and
earthquakes. I stand on the edge, look at
the view and hope not to fall. This precarious
world. So much change. So little certainty.

We try to build a house that can’t be
knocked down, and then it is. I take a picture,
it lasts longer.

 -Robin Graubard, January 2022

Robin Graubard’s raw diaries of Eastern Europe from 1993–1995 reveal a fearless and unflinching record of turbulence and change across the Balkans.

Road to Nowhere is the first publication of an under-represented voice in photographic storytelling. Coming of age in the counterculture and New York punk scenes of the 60s and 70s, Graubard’s intimate and striking photography found a voice of its own when she packed up and embedded herself within Eastern Europe during the early nineties, witnessing the Yugoslav War, Bosnian genocide, and Kosovan uprising.

Working solo, Graubard chased stories as her heart led her, uncovering the suffering and hardship of orphanages, institutions, warfare, and hunger, as well as the joyfulness of emerging subcultures and post-Soviet identity among the young populations across Russia, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia and more. With many images remaining almost completely unseen for nearly thirty years, Road to Nowhere will be the first major publication of Graubard’s work.

Robin Graubard is a recipient of The Rema Hort Mann Foundation grant and has been nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes. Her photographs have been published by The New York Times, Paris Match, The Guardian, Time, Newsweek, Der Spiegel, Die Welt, UNICEF, the New York Post, and others. In 1976, Graubard produced, directed, and edited films of Talking Heads and the Ramones. Her work is included in the collections of The Bronx Museum of Fine Arts, The Whitney Museum, and others. Her work was recently featured in Greater New York (2021) at MoMA PS1, and solo exhibitions include Random Access (2019) and Take a Picture It Lasts Longer (2018) at Office Baroque, Brussels, Jungle at JTT (2015), Incomplete at White Columns (2011) and The Doll Hospital at Anthology Film Archives (2010).