Reflected
Time
Photography of Bucharest 2000-2001
The extraordinary contrast between the vertical glass and
steel buildings of post communist era and the horizontal
bricks and wood of the old houses evokes a certain kind
of present, of a resilient city. Bucharest has endured the
experience of two kinds of past: a historical past (of a
city which had flourished since the 14 the century culminating
in the era of the "Little Paris" between wars)
and a past of a agonized and brutalised city (a city of
the communist period when churches, streets and memories
died under bulldozers). This rich and wounded past makes
Bucharest today a city of contrasting emotions and aesthetic
fascination.
Wandering through Bucharest's streets with my camera I consciously
avoided the legions of blocks of flats, full of disappointed
people (disappointed with the present and agnostics about
the future) and I searched for the shinning facades of the
new buildings as a counterpoint to isolated pockets of melancholic
decay.
My photographs are about this duality between a past drenched
in history and a present pushing inexorably towards change.
Many of my imagines represent a fragile reality, which is
bound to disappear under the urgent push to western modernity.
Roxana
Tohaneanu-Shields |
