Bratislava Mosaic: Hidden Tiles

The unique collection of Bratislava’s tiles was created thanks to the determination of researcher Julie Itin and photographer Štefan Cipár, who managed to get behind the gates of several hundred historic houses in the wider centre of Bratislava. The photographs of the pavements are accompanied by stories of the people who walked on them a hundred years ago. Barbara Kowalczuk’s visual conception of the book plays out the motif of concealment and revelation as a game with illusion: a gradient of colour disappears into the binding, texts emerge from colour gradients and in some places partially overlap the typography. The fluorescent pink is a counterpoint to the motif of concealment. The use of blind-printing on the book plates is a conceptual and visual play on the idea of the tile object.