The Nothing Spe­cial pho­to­gra­phic pro­ject is a set of pic­tu­res taken in ex-Soviet coun­tries from the 2000 onwards by Mar­tin Kol­lar, who tra­ve­led more than 13 thou­sand km to shoot it. The author him­self expe­rien­ced the con­se­quen­ces of the poli­ti­cal and social chan­ges brought by the end of com­mu­ni­sm: he is, indeed, born in Zili­na, Cze­cho­slo­va­kia, which is now Slo­va­kia. This is his fir­st work which is in fact sha­ped by his upbrin­ging, whe­re Mar­tin was sur­roun­ded by poli­ti­cal and cul­tu­ral even­ts that were repre­sen­ta­ti­ves of the cla­shes of the period but were also, accor­ding to him, “sad and fun­ny”. As a con­se­quen­ce, Nothing Spe­cial por­trai­ts this moment of chan­ge for Eastern Euro­pe throu­gh “a tra­gi­co­me­dic way of loo­king at the world”, a lens that puts toge­ther sad­ness, absurd­ness and amu­se­ment whi­le sho­wing the chaos of eve­ry­day life for coun­tries loo­king for a new poli­ti­cal order.
As he says: “Eve­ry­thing beca­me mes­sy after the end of com­mu­ni­sm in Eastern Euro­pe. If you com­pa­re it to a bot­tle with sedi­ment and you sha­ke up that bot­tle, sud­den­ly you can’t see throu­gh it. Then things start to beco­me clear as the sedi­ment set­tles; that period of sedi­men­ta­tion was when I wor­ked on the series”.