TEXT: Ştefan Ghenciulescu
If you like (to take photos of) clashes, dissonances, decadence and gaudiness, quaint and slightly sordid things, this city is for you. You almost don’t have to even try, the picture will just jump at you with a nice framework of old buildings and new ones, with improvised appendices and absurd details.
It’s a bit harder, though, to go beyond the easy, obvious charm, to discipline the frame and the flow and to have something to say about the city, and, through its own means, about people and urbanity.
Tudor Prisăcariu’s photos appear at first glance to celebrate banality. There are no heroic contrasts, as usual, but rather non‑dialogues, silent buildings, an almost complete lack of people.
A lot of melancholy, which is becoming more apparent as you look closer.
Then you begin to see that in fact each frame extracts and describes a typology: the autistic juxtapositions, the center and the periphery invading each other, non‑public space, architecture divorcing the city, abandonment, and sometimes slightly goofy optimism.
All his photos tell stories; sometimes, as you immerse yourself in the picture, not only are there subtle details and correspondences revealed (as in all good photographs), but it seems that the main narrative breaks down in side stories.
Why was that particular block of flats repainted?
Is anybody living in the trailer from the parking lot?
Is the funfair ever coming back on the greenfield? And who are the people having a picnic?
The absurd is unobtrusive but always present.
At the same time, empathy towards the city and its inhabitants is also always present. Tudor does not exploit, but rather understands and respects the people in his photos. And he tells their stories well.
After a successful crowdfunding campaign, a selection of 132 photographs shot between September 2012 and November 2014 were included in a beautiful book, printed by Fabrik.
We highly recommend it.
