The Valley of the Shadow: The Photography of Miron Zownir

The Valley of the Shadow is a collection of photography by Miron Zownir that documents a world of unconditional authenticity, dire ecstasy, and demonical possession that exists in the shadows of urban areas in New York, Berlin, and post-Communist Eastern Europe. As controversial as they are uncompromising and poetic, Zownir’s expressionistic black and white portraits capture the morbid dignity of society’s misfits, freaks, and the homeless. Miron Zownir is a German-Ukrainian photographer, filmmaker, and author whose critically acclaimed work has been featured in international solo and group exhibitions as well as renowned publications. Because his visual language takes viewers to the limit of what they can tolerate, The Valley of the Shadow is not a book for the faint-hearted.

Since the 1970s, the radical eye of photographer Miron Zownir has captured the worlds that exist in the shadows of urban areas in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, and post-Communist Eastern Europe. His Expressionistic black and white portraits capture the morbid dignity of misfits, the homeless, freaks, and whores that exists somewhere between self-determination and self-destruction, desolation and personal obsession.

Miron Zownir’s visual language smolders with existential intensity. His photographic research documents a world of unconditional authenticity, dire ecstasy, and demonical possession—and takes viewers to the limit of what they can tolerate.