Author: admin_sava

This series brings together portraits of people I encountered spontaneously – on village streets, at the edges of fields, in front of farms and market stalls in rural Transylvania. None of the photographs were arranged. They could come about because daily life here still unfolds in public space: even in small villages, social life is vibrant and takes place outdoors, especially in the evening hours.

More than two decades after the country opened to the West, and despite Romania’s EU membership, change has reached the villages only hesitantly. Fieldwork and crafts are still carried out with simple means in many places, and horse-drawn carts remain part of the streetscape. Yet transformation is unmistakable – and it shows first in the people themselves: the young dress like their peers in Western Europe, while the older generation holds on to hat, apron, and dark suit. In this coexistence, a society in transition becomes legible.

The starting point of this series is a personal one. The villages resemble in many ways the places of my childhood – as if time here followed a different rhythm. Photographing thus becomes a form of return to a world I believe I know, yet which has become foreign to me.

Formally, the portraits follow a calm, recurring arrangement: upright posture, direct gaze, the village or landscape as a stage. The objects people carry with them – a loaf of bread, a bicycle, a church banner – are part of the narrative. The sitters present themselves with seriousness and self-assurance, meeting the viewer at eye level – just as they meet the times in which they live.

This series brings together portraits of Roma, taken between 2010 and 2019 in Transylvania and the Banat, mostly in villages and small rural communities.

All photographs were taken spontaneously – encounters on the street, in front of houses and farmyards. Here, rejection is the rule, not the exception: the history of the Roma in Romania has shaped communities that keep firmly to themselves; distrust of outsiders runs deep and is at times expressed in no uncertain terms. Every image in this series is therefore a fortunate moment – a consent granted, never taken for granted. In the countryside, this approach succeeds far more readily than in the cities.

What impresses me about the Roma is their cultural persistence: while the majority population has long since adapted to Western ways of life, many Roma communities protect their own culture with striking consistency. This becomes visible in their clothing – the floral dresses and headscarves of the women, the dark suits and hats of the men – as well as in their houses and interiors. Yet this resilience is far from assured: the younger generation increasingly looks to Western models, and the question of how long this way of life will endure resonates in every portrait.

At the same time, the social reality remains unmistakable: many Roma, especially in rural areas, still belong to the poorest strata of society. The portraits neither conceal this nor put it on display. Their stance is one of encounter at eye level: the sitters decide for themselves how they wish to appear – with pride, seriousness, and self-assurance – asserting their dignity before the viewer.

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.