Taken years ago, along with ‘Venus‘, ‘Portal’ is what I like to call ‘a happy accident’.

First time I saw it, it didn’t inspire anything, the second time I came across it, I clicked ‘next!’, the third time, I didn’t see the vision, but the 50th time I finally saw the potential.

Themes such as witches, fairies, fair women, fragility are often seen in my photographs – mostly because I stumble upon them, not that I go looking for them, but along with pictorialism, it’s something I have come across again and again for over 7 years now, ever since I started university, where I studied photography.

It started shyly with the pictorealism style, with pictures such as ‘Walk‘, to fully embracing the style a few years later, with my bachelor’s degree project, ‘Year 45 before Lolita‘ (I have yet to translate it to English so apologies to non-romanian speakers; Google Translate is your friend in this case).

Now it’s almost like it comes to me naturally; I start to edit and I end up with something in the pictorialism style more often than not. So I started to embrace it. But it’s not always the right style or a ‘happy accident’.

For example, we have this picture, which as much as I would like not to, I consider a failure. There’s just something missing there and I have yet to find out what.

So while I enjoy the process of editing, the results can vary.

However, ‘Portal’ is what I consider a successful shot and edit (although I always think I can do better). And it represents, as in the ‘Year 45 before Lolita‘ project, the link between past and present, by approaching themes of old times (witches and magic) and new times (science/portals/wormholes), although they are not screaming out loud, but are more of a whisper.