Untouched by Communism is a bold rethinking of the present through its imagined past.
It is an investigation into the multilayered lived reality of my own homeland through exploring the generation born here closer to capitalism than to communism. I am creating a rendition of people and places that make up Romania, capturing everyday youth and their lives against the fleeting memories of a bygone past that still permeates the selves and the landscapes.
Over a year I met with young people in Romania to see what their lives are like nowadays. Connected to the world via internet, with access to the latest news, and freedom to travell anywhere in Europe, with possibilities of driving convertible cars in their 20s and studying abroad, they cannot imagine the grim realities of long queues for milk, limited food supplies and rationing of petrol. Nor can they imagine disappearances without trace, the 75 political prisons and labor camps, the everyday censorship with bans on foreign media and travel. This is a generation that has no memories of communism.
Out of the 25 young people I met and photographed, four chose to attend universities in the UK following the example set by their older friends, two have migrated in search of work and almost all the rest are making steps to either study or work abroad. 2.7 million Romanians have left since the end of Communism.
Untouched by Communism talks about how these young people in search of an identity navigate through the juxtaposing layers of the past and the present, how a coherent image is constructed out of fragments of memory and ‘western’-inspired bits of lifestyle and aspirations, and how this ostensibly contradictory synthesis gives them a sense of displacement.