Exploring themes of introspection in portraiture, the 50 Czech photographers gathered in this volume include Ivan Pinkava, Jir David, Pavel Ban ka, Milena Dopitova and Dita Pepe, as well as younger, lesser-known emerging talents. Each photographer supplies a short commentary on their work.

"What would it be like if I had been born somewhere else, in a different way, to other parents?" Czech photographer Dita Pepe (born 1973) casts herself as country girl, businessman's wife, mother of a large family, old woman and collector of rare china. This is the first monograph on her meticulously staged photographs.

Drawn from a broad range of photography, from works by famed photographers to anonymous images, "Once Upon a Time in the East" offers a portrait of Czechoslovakia across the twentieth century, registering its dramatic changes of regime as well as more intimate scenes of daily life. Communist demonstrations and festivals are documented alongside domestic scenes in pubs and cottages. Among the historic moments recorded in this volume are the blasting of the Stalin monument in Prague in 1962 (taken by an unknown photographer); Milon Novotny's photographs of the funeral parade of Jan Palach in 1969; and an incredible series of surveillance photographs taken by an unidentified member of the Czech secret police, which furtively documents equally furtive assignations on the streets of Prague. Works by Ivo Gil, Josef Koudelka, Jindrich Streit, Miroslav Tichy, Jiri Toman and many others are also included.

Named Best History Book in the 2002 Golden Light Awards Photographic Book of the Year competition sponsored by the Maine Photographic Workshops. Not until the fall of the communist regime in 1989 and the end of Czechoslovakia's cultural isolation did the world begin to appreciate the Czech avant-garde photographers of the first half of the twentieth century. This first survey of Czech avant-garde photography introduces the important work of Frantisek Drtikol, Jaromir Funke, Jaroslav Rossler, Jindoich styrsky, Josef Sudek, and numerous others whose work made Czech photography synonymous with visions of modernity. The essays introduce the period and explore the background and connections among the photographers. Biographical profiles are also included. But the book's main attraction is its outstanding collection of duotone and color images, many published here for the first time. The Czech edition of this book received the "Best Photographic Publication of 1999-2000" award from Primavera Fotografica in Barcelona and from Month of Photography in Bratislava and was one of six finalists for the 2001 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award.

The oeuvre of the leading Czech avant-garde photographer Eugen Wiskovsky (1888-1964) is not large in size or subject range, but it is noteworthy in its originality, depth of ideas, and mastery. Wiskovsky's early New Objectivist works, from the late 1920s and early 1930s, sought artistic effect in apparently nonaesthetic objects: His inventive lighting and cropping allowed their elementary lines to stand out, to lose their worldly associations and take on potential metaphorical meanings. In his dynamic diagonal compositions, Wiskovsky was among the most radical practitioners of Czech Constructivism. His landscape work is similarly distinctive. With text from Vladimmr Birgus, a historian of photography and the head of the Institute of Creative Photography at Silesian University, Opava, in the Czech Republic.