honorable mention
Andrei Iliescu romania
title
Fragmentary World
back to gallery
entry description
It is a day like any other, the sky is blue, the houses and the trees are all in the right place. You notice a man in the street; you can follow his regular steps on the pavement. He speaks and gestures and you can even distinguish his lips moving. Nothing seems to be wrong and in this world of certainty you can conclude that everything is logical. You keep looking but suddenly you feel that something happens. Nothing changed, but all is different. All this serene blend of gestures and words vanishes and suddenly you feel the earth slipping beneath your feet and the panic overwhelms you. A glass wall rises in front of you. And suddenly you know... You simply don't understand and you never understood anything.about the photographer
I was born in 1956, in Bucharest, Romania, to a family of artists, so I think that my passion for all things creative was in many ways predestined. My parents thought I would become a sculptor, or a painter, like them. Instead, I set up to conquer the world with a fully manual Russian photo camera. Art in the communist era was a dead end so I decided to study at the Polytechnic. During the revolution in December 1989 I wandered the streets with my camera and took advantage of the chance I had been waiting for all my life. Romanians were free again and I couldn’t be less - resigning my job as engineer, I pursued the long expected career as a photographer. I spent eight years working for press agencies such as AFP, EPA, Sygma-Corbis or AP and then moved towards commercial photography. A different world with different rules. Working in my own studio was a huge challenge. Whether I’m working with an art director or the owner of a small business, my focus is always the same: solve the problem and make the client happy. All this time, photojournalism kept whispering in my ear, beckoning me. So I started to travel, just to photograph. More and more. Farther and farther away. The overwhelming scent of real life. And this very vivid image appeared to me. A schoolboy, 40 ago, skipping classes, wondering through his town, with his Praktica photo camera and some Orwo films in his pockets. And that’s who I will always be.back to gallery