The File on D. - Dossier D. - Arianne Olthaar

This fold-out book of photographs of hotel interiors in the former Eastern Bloc by visual artist Arianne Olthaar, challenges the imagination to create its own space and story while wandering through the cinematic empty spaces. Dutch writer Arnon Grunberg, inspired by the photographs, wrote a short story for the book. Between 2008 and 2012, Olthaar visited a number of former state and luxury hotels in Central and Eastern Europe designed in the 1970s and 1980s. She photographed the interiors with a Voigtlander Bessa L analogue camera. For this publication The File on D., at her invitation, Dutch writer Arnon Grunberg wrote a story that could have been set in one of these spaces.