Photographs’ Souls

There are photo-reporters who take pictures with their hands. There are photo-reporters who take pictures with their eyes. The Jurnalul National photo-reporters take pictures with their souls. This is one of the reasons that make these photos seem unreal from time to time. One can never tell whether the images present in the photos have their own souls or whether the photo-reporters’ souls are in them. Or maybe there is some weird soul mixture in there: their souls superpose the images’. The photography exhibition initiated today at the National Theatre witnesses the things I wrote above. There won’t be few times for one to say the images are unreal, to say they cannot be true. This is the art of the photo-reporters from Jurnalul National, the art of the photographers’ souls, the art of the photographs’ souls, the art of souls!

In the latest years, I believe we focused too much on the words to the detriment of images. The statements, the ugly words, the tough expressions formed the headlines of our transition. The image has been abandoned since it wasn’t considered to be aggressive enough to attack the readers’ eyes. Of course there were violent images in the newspapers and at TV. But these are not the images we are interested in, these are the commercial images, which sell and which are sold. I am interested in the images I was talking about at the beginning of this article, the images that don’t necessarily depend on a specific event, the images that can compose a picture of our lives at any time. The best photo-reporters team in Romania show you a living and true Romania. This is actually the Romania you will never see in any other place. This year - "The Jurnalul National Year" - has been the year in which the photo-reporters from our newspaper have rediscovered Romania for you, our Romania lovers critics, I might say! You can have the revelation of discovering Romania’s soul in the eyes of a woman who carries a bag with eggs, a newspaper or in all kinds of horizons, real and unreal, the horizons of our lives actually.

All that I can do now is to invite you at this extraordinary exhibition and to ask you to take care of the Romania you will discover there!