I’m Inside Tagging architecture in Eastern European cold war propaganda postcards

A provocative and crafty book that exposes the dictatorial grandeur of communist buildings and statues.

By making collages of the communist, brutalist architecture presented on tourist postcards (1947-1991) with disruptive tags found on murals worldwide (2010-2025), artist/photographer Gabriel Jones blends the top-down and the grassroots, the sublime and the subluminal as well as past and present political context. 

This decontextualisation is subversive, causing a humorist effect. The tags on the facades reveal what many of us secretly think, in speculative or intuitive creative thought. As such, this series brings an immaterial resilience to imposed superstructures, and an alternative to the tourist experiences. This dynamic easily lends itself to mirror against the superstructures proposed by contemporary politicians. Be it in our minds, shared with others socially or by tagging places yourself. The juxtapositions in these collages’ express the resilience of the liberty people take towards facades imposed upon us.