Author: admin_sava

Statement for this project will follow shortly

Statement für dieses Projekt folgt bald.

Information zu diesem Projekt folgt demnächst.

In the 60’s to the beginning of the 80’s in Romania, as everywhere else in the world, cities were massively expanded with high-rise residential buildings. In Romania, these quarters were propagated by the communist party as a symbol of socialist achievements. Here, the proletariat was supposed to live smartly and in much better conditions than under capitalism.

As a child, I often went with my parents to visit relatives or friends who lived in these neighborhoods, so I strongly associate these areas with the communist period in Romania. I was very impressed by these large blocks of houses, by the long boulevards along which these houses were lined up, but also somewhat disturbed by a certain desolation that prevailed in these neighborhoods.

More than 20 years after the fall of communism, I visited these neighborhoods again. With my camera, I captured the changes since that time. The most striking transformations are the huge colorful advertising billboards that cover several floors and countless large churches that have been newly built between the apartment blocks.

However, the most important thing to me about this project are the people that can be found in this quarter. They represent the present and the city architecture is only their stage. In the pictures of this series the people are represented in diorama-like human scenes. The viewer (or photographer) is invisible and every single protagonist on the street is on his own way, from one place to another, embedded in his everyday life.

Note: individual images in this series were created from multiple shots. A collage allows me to better capture the impression about these people, their movement and the mood of the street in a single image. These images are intended less for quick viewing on the Internet but as large contemplative formats.

When observing groups of people in painting, each protagonist is clearly visible, each appears to be in a well-considered, choreographed position that comes together optimally within the overall composition.

Can street photography, without influencing the people who happen to move through the frame, show each individual from a favorable or interesting perspective? Can multiple people be shown in an aesthetically advantageous configuration? How can one of photography’s greatest limitations—capturing only a single moment—be transcended? These questions led me to this project.

A single image in this series is not created from a single photograph, but from many, often hundreds of photographs. From this photographic raw material, the final image emerges through digital collage. I often provide clues in the image to this process, for example by having a person appear twice.

The actual goal of this process is to show people more clearly, as they are in everyday life. And last but not least, the background is also important to me: it should show the protagonists in the image within one of their everyday environments, an environment that reflects contemporary times.

The year 2008 was still without fear of terrorist attacks. Until the beginning of the decade it was possible to watch the construction of the showmen’s houses and equipment, the beer tents, in the period from July to September. The stroll in between was most fun a few days before the beginning of the Oktoberfest, everything was set up but wonderfully freed from crowds of people, staggering visitors or the noisy recreational commerce.

All pictures in this series were taken on the day before the start of the 2008 Oktoberfest. It was a day with wonderful sunshine, with bright colors, which intensifies the scurrility of the landscape.

In the meantime it is no longer possible to experience the construction of the Oktoberfest, maybe by the imposed distance that the fence around the Theresienwiese forces you to watch. Thus these pictures are also memories of a carefree past or witnesses of a loss of freedom to public safety.

All pictures September 2008

As far as the weather or the light allows it, flying is for me a time of contemplation, an admiration of the overwhelming forms of nature and the patterns that man draws on the surface of the earth.  

From a height of several thousand meters, seen from a tiny metal bowl, the scale and perspective of the landscape changes radically. With every flight I am fascinated by this view and I cannot resist the attempt to take something of it with me.

A series of landscape images that have one thing in common, they are filled with lots of water, both sweet and salty.

Statement will follow shortly.

These landscape photos were taken during hikes in the Alps.