How did you begin photography and why did you choose this means of expression rather than any other?I had my first contact with photography very young, and in a sad moment of my life, at my grandmother’s funeral. Her brother / my uncle who lives in Paris and is a researcher in physics and chemistry left a camera in our home… and I documented the funeral. I was very young, and this was the only way to say something. In those days, I was very shy.
Both photographs are excerpts from a larger body of work about Romania, your native country. You were 6 when Ceausescu died in 1989. Is this body of work a way for you to understand your country and its past, to feel closer to it? Living in a post-communist country like Romania is not a sad or negative reality for me. It’s a wonderful thing to witness so many transformations for the better, but what is truly wonderful is to be one of those creating the change our society needs. In order to fulfil our potential as a country, we need knowledge, commitment and involvement.
As a photographer, how did you decide to approach these issues? Before the 20th anniversary of the Romanian revolution, I started this work for a book first about my country 20 years after the revolution, and I tried to show a portrait of the country – a land of winter, Orthodox faith, class divide and industrial decay.
For most Romanians, the economic promise of the revolution has proven hollow. Industrial work, where it continues at all, uses communist-era technology. Many factories have been abandoned. There is hardly any middle class, leaving masses of poor people in the countryside.
My rural subjects are often faceless: silhouetted against a blanched snowscape, obscured by a train window or dwarfed by eastern orthodox icons. My story of Romania is told as much through what is absent – young men, modern industry, summer, colour – as through what is there.
Deep in Romania, it's cold, it’s winter. People don’t have food on the table, and the crisis is a really big thing. I went outside Bucharest many times, and the feeling is really deep and black, but with beautiful memories. In these 2 particular pictures, you see women more because men who are still around the house are working while women are going to church. But in remote rural areas of Romania, a lot of young men aren’t there anymore – they are somewhere in Spain, Italy, France working… at least, when I shot this story, a lot of men had left the country to find work.
What direction is your work taking these days? Are you still covering zones of conflict?I am against conflicts, but sometimes I have to go. I believe photography is a voice: when we go there, we try to make photography a voice for those in pain, to show what’s going on there on the ground, to bear witness. In the recent period, I covered the Arab Spring, but in a slightly different way than what I did with conflicts until now, because I chose to be more independent on this subject . I am planning to return to Syria, but as you very well know, it’s not easy. I have few projects which will take me some time to finish; the one I really have to finish very soon is Pakistan.
Limited edition, numbered and signed.