Yes – that’s how old I am. I studied in Germany my Junior year in college before the Berlin wall fell. I was dating a girl from Romania so I got a chance to travel to a lot of the East bloc. Crazy times.

Hard to tell from the pictures, but I tried to capture what a communist economy means for day to day life. The clothes were dreary, the bus stops boring, the city itself drab. That’s because there’s no advertising – no need to advertise soap if there’s only one type of soap to buy.