Stair hallways

Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 2019-2020
Olympus OM2n, Kodak Portra 100 & Fuji C200

Two shots that I took in 2015 shortly after my returning from Berlin. I went to Bucharest to pick up my bachelor license from the University and while doing this I visited the city where I lived for 4 years.

It was May-June and I met Crina, an old friend and colleague from the University. She studied ceramics and had her atelier and home in this eastern neighborhood, close to the exit on the highway to the Black Sea. I really should visit Bucharest more often, I think to myself now when because of a virus outbreak that went pandemic I cannot even go out for a walk in the park.

I took these two shots at a wide aperture, one with the focus on the poppies, the other with the focus on the buildings from the background, just because I didn't knew exactly which one would I like better. So here is a GIF with both of them.

Kodak Ektar, Pentax Spotmatic F, Bucharest, 2015

A nice surprise with this film, it aged beautifully. Actually just these 3 frames from a Fuji Superia 800 that I shot in 2016 and re-scanned a few weeks ago, transformed into something unexpected. I don't know exactly why, but at this point it doesn't even really matter, only if I would like to try and replicate the effect. Which I might want.

What happened is that the colors metamorphosed and the emulsion looks like burned from place to place, so the images are becoming dreamy and fairy-like-milky. Which is even more surprising since the days when I shot these images were by themselves different, either covered in a thick fog or nicely contoured by the mellow sun of autumn, but anyway both wrapped in mystery. So it's all a nice big coincidence, but so is the Universe.

Shot on Fuji Superia 800, Olympus Mju

Călimănești, Căciulata & Viscri, Romania, 2016

Cluj-Napoca
February 2020

Portra 400
Olympus OM2n

From the archive

I rescanned all my negatives, since most of the scans got lost throughout the years on different hard drives. This is how I found these images on a Kodak Profoto 100 from 2006. It was my everyday film back then, cheap and easy to find. Here, from the balcony of my parent's flat, I was trying to catch the lightnings on a summer storm. I was unsuccessful, and I immediately rejected these images, considering them worthless.

However, seeing this archaic version of my hometown, with empty streets and the old facade of this communist shopping center (just take a look at the design of those lightning poles!!), I feel the necessity of making sure that I save these shots, as I understand now that the place has changed allot in less then 15 years since that rainy afternoon.

So here is a GIF with 7 frames.

Postcards from Berlin ll

   Berlin, October 2019. I lived here between 2011 and 2015 and it definitely shaped my way of being. After so many years and I still have - to my surprise, dreams where I find myself still living there. This didn't happened when I left home at 18, nor when I left Bucharest after 4 years. Berlin has a special place in my heart, its memory is vivid and complex, as I can still remember the smell of burned coal and coffee floating over the streets of Neukölln.

    This is a series through which I am looking to somehow recreate these memories into images. In the same way that Mr. Bean was sending greeting cards on Christmas to himself, in the same way I will revisit the city from time to time and create my own postcards as souvenirs. You can find the original post here.

 Pentax Spotmatic F on Portra 160.