Romania (2013 - 2015)

Hidden amongst the historic and traditional region of Transylvania, Ighișu Nou is a small village situated in Country Sibiu, and close to the Carpathian mountains. Rich in warmth and welcome, the local people follow traditional, rural and agricultural lifestyles. Parts of the population experience extreme poverty. The village outskirts are marked by makeshift housing with poor access to basic facilities. Younger people follow agricultural duties handed down by family, sometimes in place of education with school terms starting and ending according to the harvest. Central to the village is a fortified Evangelical church and smaller services around the village mark the end of the week for many families. Horses and carts weave and race through the centre, out towards the cornfields. Shepherds roam and carve their way through the surrounding hills. From summer to winter, crossing the village, town and deep into the local mountains, the series reflects visits cross two years, meeting local people. The images were taken in quieter moments whilst volunteering with a dedicated local NGO who provide support services and development work in the local and surrounding populations. Romania's peaceful people and November light ends the series, and left me in a perpetual summer. As Mihail Sebastian writes about the turning of the seasons in 1934 - "only the Danube is rough and disturbed, choppy, ashen, there is something agonised about it, arrested in it's onwards tumble. You would say it had froze... There is nothing of my lively, hurried Danube of March in it... my leisurely, regal Danube of Autumn."