12 December 2025
Truth is Stranger than Fiction explores the interplay between truth, lies, and propaganda during the Cold War. Developed from research at the Blinken Open Society Archives in Budapest, the project draws on two distinct archival sources. One comprises of vernacular photographs from the 1980s, originally discarded or censored by the Hungarian state photographic lab Főfotó for political or technical reasons. The other consists of field reports from Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, documenting everyday life under communism in the 1950s through interviews described as Kafkaesque in tone.
Supported by a Visegrad scholarship, Wysocka examined more than 10,000 photographs from the Private Photo and Film Foundation and 3,500 field reports from the Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty Research Institute. The project also takes the form of an artist’s book, structured in a circular and non-linear way to create an experimental reading experience.
The publication combines two key elements: surrealist texts that evoke the harshness of daily life in early communist Hungary, and colour photographs that suggest the waning of that era. Through a deliberate use of arrhythmia, the work challenges conventional reading rhythms, questioning the illustrative function of photographs and drawing attention to the ambiguity that lies between image and text.
Masha Wysocka is a Belgian-Spanish multidisciplinary artist. She focuses on stories from the peripheries, bringing both history and science to the forefront of her artistic practice. She has received several prestigious awards, including the Mead Fellowship from the University of the Arts London. She has also won various scholarships, such as the 2023 PhMuseum Photography Grant – Residency Bursary at Landskrona Foto.
