Test the West

Test the West is a self-published photobook by Misha Kominek, produced in a signed, numbered edition of 150 copies through his own Berlin imprint.

The softcover volume, bound in yellow cloth, was published by Kominek Gallery in 2017. Its title echoes the German cigarette advertising slogan used to court East German consumers after reunification, a phrase closely tied to Berlin's post-1989 landscape, though the publisher's own description of the book's specific photographic content was not available from the sources checked. It stands as one of four monographs Kominek has produced of his own photography, following First Journey Home (2013) and Strangers in Paradise (2013) and preceding Photocopies from Tokyo (2014).

Misha Kominek is a Polish-born, Berlin-based photographer, publisher, and curator who emigrated to Germany at twelve, studied photography at IEFC in Barcelona, and founded Kominek Books + Gallery in 2007 after running SCOPE magazine from 2001. His own photographic work, including First Journey Home, a 1997 road trip retracing his childhood in Poland, often returns to questions of displacement and return between Eastern and Western Europe.