"Bucharest...
the town of my youth, of my dreams, of my loves...
Bucharest - the capital, the town of my student years which
held all the promises for my hungry mind "
Whenever I go back to Bucharest I
discover that time has touched thecity in diverse and interesting
ways: some places have an almost Mediterranean beauty with
walls crumbling in rich terracotta nuances, while others
have the clean angular beauty of glass and steel facades
reflecting the electromodernity of the present.
This extraordinary contrast between the vertical glass and
steel
buildings of post communist era and the horizontal bricks
and wood of the old houses evokes a certain kind of present,
of a resilient city. Bucharest has endured the experience
of two kinds of past: a glorious past (of a city which had
flourished since the 14 the century culminating in the era
of the "Little Paris" between wars) and a past
of a agonized and brutalised city (a city of the communist
period when churches, streets and memories died under bulldozers).
This rich and wounded past makes Bucharest today a city
of contrasting emotions and aesthetic fascination.
Wandering through Bucharest's streets with my camera I consciously
avoid the legions of blocks of flats, full of disappointed
people (disappointed with the present and agnostics about
the future) and I search for the shinning facades of the
new buildings as a counterpoint to isolated pockets of melancholic
decay.
My photographs are about this duality between a past drenched
in history and a present pushing inexorably towards change.
Many of my imagines represent a fragile reality, which is
bound to disappear under the urgent push to western modernity.
