My City of Ruins V

about these days

My City of Ruins IV

My City of Ruins III

We are all just liars or lunatics

An Evening of Light and Sound

In addition to the summer exhibitions that will take place, we're adding another one-night-only event hosted by the Bucharest Operetta. Together with Dana and her colleagues we will be having an evening of photography and classical canto. More news as we organize the event. It would probably take place sometime between the 1st and the 8th of June.

My City of Ruins II

Triptych

triptych [ˈtrɪptɪk]
n
1. (Fine Arts & Visual Arts / Art Terms) a set of three pictures or panels, usually hinged so that the two wing panels fold over the larger central one: often used as an altarpiece
2. a set of three hinged writing tablets
[from Greek triptukhos, from tri- + ptux plate; compare diptych]

My City of Ruins

The city i grew up in has always had a special place in my photography (to be read as "i've never actually ever taken proper photographs of Bucharest, except journalism stuff). So, since i got stuck there, volcano and all, i figured i should shoot some large format images of how i feel about the place. I got asked why do i want to move back, quite a few times and in shot, the images are a bit of an answer. I'll post a couple every day until they are all exhausted.



PS: I've also got the whole final project series done, but that's only going to be shown later on in the year, during the exhibitions.

Bogdan

and another one. And that's about it for now.

Dana

sorry for not posting more images ... no time, no mood and no images. Soon. Patience is a virtue. Until then, my far better half on a side note:

Alter-post-surrealist modernism

Thank you Cherie for the picture

Last Stand

Yeah, we're coming. And i am considering giving some people a piece of my mind that day, just for the sake of ruining the day. See you there.

This last week

I am sorry i haven't been writing anything this last week. I've been running around shooting for my project, went to the countryside for off road but couldn't, because of worn out steering bushes and spent the whole of last evening chatting with my parents who've just come back from a 2500 km race in Morocco. Will put some pictures of them and us during the weekend sometime this week.

Later edit: we're still stuck in Bucharest due to the volcano (my Icelandic editor went off roading and photographing the whole of the first eruption btw) and there's no sign i will be leaving soon so we're having a concert on the 22nd in Slobozia, in The Barn. See you there.

Good Weekend II

Well, i noticed i don't post that many images i take these days. Will do so when i am back in the UK and will have processed my large format images. For now, courtesy of Mr. Calin Jurca, images from Sunday with Ciprian Strugariu and myself at the wheels. Damage: the LR on the grill got taken off while Ciprian had a few issues with the alternator getting semi flooded. No worries, glue will fix everything.

Good Weekend

She's unafraid

To my critics

I really think you need to be better than me to be able to criticize my work. And you need me to consider that you are. This is just an observation on the comments that we got on the article about me as well as a thread post that a little fuck put up here (it's in Romanian and you should only translate it if you want to read pointless ranting). I really wish that old frustrated photographers would start selling newspapers and stuff. It would make our life so much easier. I do mean to be disrespectful because, as St. Vincent (the chick, not the saint) says "fear no gods, regardless of who they are". This little post just came along because i am who i am and because i completely disagree with the stupid way that some people see things. Old unsuccessful photographers that shoot weddings need to understand simple things like:

1) if you were good in the 80's, they passed.
2) you're probably way behind and stuck in your loop out of which you're too stubborn to get out.
3) by the end of the decade you'll be dead so you have to square with that. you're time passed. If you did your best, be happy. If you didn't there's loads of corners you and sit in and cry.

Later edit: when i say too old, there's a little quirk. If you're not willing to change your perspectives and adapt, you're too old. It's never been about age.

We shall be free

Last night i had a good friend come over, the one that i walked for 28 kilometers in the hot summer sun with backpacks and food to get to Sarmisegetuza Regia. After he left i spent a little while staring at the newspaper article about me. Strangely enough, it never actually felt like anything. I always imagined that i should be happy or sad or excited or ... somehow. But it didn't make me feel like anything. It was just something else i did.

I figured the reason and it's got something to do with my damn high expectations regarding any and everything, from driving to shooting to relationships and general human interaction. Perhaps i came to realize that my idea of how something should be will invariably be better, cleaner, faster and well ... better-er than reality. Reality will have chips and cracks and imperfections and their existence there will create an unhappiness which, i found, always overshadows the pleasure of the actual thing.

And now i take my foot off the gas, i park on the side of the road and stop to think: Is it really that, if you do learn and evolve (and implicitly so should your expectations) you will get to know an uncomfortable amount of information? Is it that the information and the things you imagine will always be better than the real thing and will almost always make you unhappy? Bogdan posed a good question last night: "Is it better to be an unhappy Socrates or a happy imbecile?". It's not ignorance that is bliss, it's stupidity and the comfort of not challenging and dissecting your core so much that you never really know what was there to begin with. I would observe, in this particular regard, that the need for self reflection and the desire to surpass your current condition as a being with the ability to be rational is in itself a rather damning activity.

Nobody tells you when you start reading and start questioning the process that if you do it right it will mess you up. It's just something that derives exclusively from extensive periods of observation and reflection (of which, it might indeed come as a shock, i am capable). I am not quite sure how and what needs to be done there. After the article, after my exhibition series and after all the brilliant things that have gone down this last period, i still tend to be critical (i suspect that indeed, if you are content with your work you stop evolving but this discontent with everything is just my way of being a complete idiot). I am still unhappy about how i do things, with my process and the fact that i am not as good as i expect myself to be. Dana and i were having this little debate regarding her opera singing and how she can relate to how i feel since she's rarely happy with her own results even though everyone else is mesmerized. I come to think that maybe we make art, we sing and we create objects to please ourselves. You're your own worst nightmare and most damning critic because in your head there's no place left to hide from yourself. You hide from others in your art but you hide from yourself in everything else except what you create. This is just my two pearls of wisdom for the day.

Answer

I got quite a few calls and mails yesterday regarding the article. And i considered it would be about time i mentioned that i am indeed an egocentric little fuck...in case it was not obvious until now. Just as a point of conversation, i mean.

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