On Reverse is an ongoing visual extrospection of my homeland, Romania.
When I left Romania I was 21 years old, when I came back I was 25, and now I am 26.
I spent my years of maturing in U.S. studying photojournalism on a Fulbright scholarship, which also made me to come back home after I finish my studies. So I did. What followed was a very rough transition, moths to readapt to my own country and culture. In Romania, things are so much slower, older, and the people's mentality scares me the most, that nothing will ever change and become better in this country where everybody is corrupt.
Thus, after I lived the American dream for three years and grew into that, I came back to a country that doesn't seem prepared at all to take me back. Therefore, the only way to stay is to create for myself the opportunities that the country doesn't offer to me. While trying to make peace with my country, I photograph, I try to understand how I see it, feel it, and think about it. When feeling lost, and not understood, photography seems to be the only way to cope, make sense of my new reality, that once I used to know, and now it became so much distant and foreign.
Besides photographing Romanian society, I also turn my camera on my own family since they are a big part of who, I am, and the reason that keeps me here. While being away from home I understood how important family is in the Romanian culture. When I had classmates going home once a year seeing their parents, knowing the live in the same country with no ocean between them, I was quite shocked. However, over the years I notice a big change for the Romanian families caused by financial problems. More and more people, either the youth or the parents go work abroad for long period of times, and grow apart. My sister left to Germany to find a better job. She met her husband; they have a baby and settled there. Whereas my parents they fought to stay in the country, have their kids growing up here, moved close to our grandparent's house, and started a family business with a vegetable farm. Once I understood that family structure and importance changes in Romania, I felt a strong need to document it as it is and it will be in the next years.
Medium:
I use my YashicaMatt 124 G because it slows me down, also because I love the square format.
