Robin Graubard – Road to Nowhere

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

Loose Joints is proud to introduce Road to Nowhere, 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 colour approach to 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 (b. 1951) was born and lives in New York City. She is a graduate of NYU Film School. Graubard’s photographs intermix the autobiographical, editorial and documentary, in a career spanning forty years. Graubard’s work encompasses social worlds from squatter punks on the Lower East Side, mafia families, Jamaican dancehall, Eastern European crises and much more.

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 is 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), and The Doll Hospital at Anthology Film Archives (2010).

228pp, 160 × 205 mm, 130 photos
Extended texts by the artist
Section-sewn softcover with painted black edges
ISBN 978-1-912719-36-5
April 2022

© Loose Joints