The Queue

The book “The Queue. An Episode in Tartu’s Photo History” follows the exhibition of the same name, which is dedicated to a series of Soviet Tartu photo club exhibitions titled “Woman in Photographic Art” and it draws attention to the peculiar role that photo clubs, which enjoyed somewhat greater freedom than the strictly regimented creative unions, have played in Estonian cultural history.

In the Soviet Union, photography was not recognized as a form of art and therefore there were no photographic artists. A professional photographer was somebody who took photos for the media, for a factory, or for some other institution. At the same time, beginning in the 1960s photography as a hobby was promoted by the state […]. (from the exhibition’s “The Queue. An Episode in Tartu’s Photo History” statement)

With essays:
The Queue. Naked Women & Politics by Indrek Grigor on Tartu photo club exhibitions phenomenon;
Women with Cameras by Alise Tifentale on the Soviet photo club culture offering the case study of the Latvian exhibition Woman with Camera, 1977;
Socialist Striptease by Adam Mazur on the phenomenon of Venus, the most popular photography exhibition in the history of Central and Eastern Europe.