Youth without age, life without death

This project in progress takes inspiration from a Romanian folk tale exploring the notions of eternal life and the uncertain quest for our own destiny.

Aptly titled Youth Without Age and Life Without Death, the folklore was written by Petre Ispirescu (1830-1887). The overarching argument is a common but affirming one: life outside of linear time, and thus agelessness, is impossible. And if there is to be any remote possibility, it is only a form of momentary independence that is offered before the inevitable occurs – meeting one’s death like any mortal.

Now I am journeying into this literary world. This latest body of work is a photographic exploration of the people, places and landscapes I encountered in Romania. Inspired by this famous mythology and a sense of a temporal place
I am searching to visually reflect on the fragility of life. Alternating between reality and fantasy, I feel a separation from the modern world, where rural traditions remain intact and life appears to be marked by ritual. There is a feeling that nothing or nobody escapes.

Like a web of nostalgia and resistance, all the signs of temporality come to bear in objects that are charged with tensions of permanence and impermanence. Time elsewhere is relentless but here something of it is left behind. A place of its own time, even its youth live historically.