Edited by Odeta Catana, Photo Editor
Where do you live and how did you start with photography? Usually there is always the old story of the boy who finds his grandfather’s camera, did that happen to you as well or not?
I live in Bucharest. Romania. I started taking pictures pretty late, after a master degree in social anthropology, which kinda turned on my observation mood and after a few bumps with my writing skills I decided I needed to express myself somehow and the camera is now .. literally at arm’s length. but actually, it’s pretty funny that after i started to have an interest in photography i discovered that in my family, my father was taking it pretty seriously at a certain point in his life, and that my grandfather was actually making his own wooden cameras back in the 30′ and taking beautiful snapshots of his friends and family. So I needed to buy a camera first to discover that all my paternal line in the family had artistic striving and a lack of communication.
Where your inspiration does comes from?
From staring maybe and from long breaks without my daily routine.
In a portrait, what is important for you?
Well, I don’t have a lot of experience with portraiture yet, as I stayed focused mostly on street scenes and landscapes, but I think the important part would be, from my point of view, to give as much voice to the person in front of the camera…I’m more into observation than participation
What kind of relationship do you have with your subject when you shoot?
What’s fascinating in photography is that, as subjects, we all share continuous rays of light that are jumping and pumping from everything around us and all you have to do is press that shutter to start a conversation and subjectify the world around you.
Do you think it’s important to follow a school to learn how to shoot?
I think a school is important now mostly for the contacts you make and the opportunities it creates for being in a medium where everybody is thinking about projects. But for the skills you can achieve…it all depends on how committed you are and how well you know your priorities I think. And how much time you spend on shooting actually.
What’s the photo you want to take and you never did?
I always say to my friends that the best photos are the ones that I see and i never take, and this happens every time I’m walking on the street with my camera…I see a great deal of perfect moments that I never capture on film, but I imagine that it’s all part of the exercise of shooting. So, for every photo that I actually take, there are a dozens of wonderful frames developing in my mind.
What’s your photo-mission?
I don’t think I have a photo mission, but rather photography gave me missions in my life, getting used with this visual language that gives you a filter to (de)contextualize what you see around you, or getting a sense of the geography and the perspectives of the places you shoot and where you move around. Kind of like in a video game where the character develops a consciousness and becomes self-aware with the feeling of being part of a scene.
