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Falling on Blades

Mihai Barabancea - Falling on Blades
Photographer Mihai Barabancea portrays the underworld of post-Soviet Romania and Moldova: a set of subjects and scenes revealing the crude reality of the streets, zeroing in on moments of ruthless rawness and keen poignancy.
To “accidentally fall on a blade thirteen times” is a sardonic—and rather poetic—way of saying to get stabbed.
“It doesn't always kill you, but it always hurts. And still you've got to "roll with the punches" and keep going. I find this ability to roll with the punches, to "take the pain" and adapt to circumstances, in my subjects: gypsies, beggars, crooks, vagabonds, underdogs, conmen, buskers and various shady characters in Romania and Moldova. My object is not to exploit problem-ridden post-communist Romania for voyeuristic purposes. I'm not an indifferent observer, but one who tries hard to give these people the freedom they need to portray themselves on camera—and to bring about necessary changes themselves in the social stereotypes still assigned to them.” (Mihai Barabancea)
Barabancea uses the camera as a tool to interact with his subjects. But instead of staging picturesque portraits, he zeroes in on moments of ruthless rawness and keen poignancy.
Mihai Barabancea (born 1983 in Bucharest, where he lives and works) is a Bucharest-based photographer. Barabancea made quite a splash in Romania back in the late 1990s when he appeared on TV as a member of a graffiti gang. In 2018 he won the Gomma Prix Award for his series Overriding Sequence.
Texts by Mihai Barabancea.

Graphic design: Maximage.
 
published in November 2020
English edition
18 x 24 cm (softcover)
260 pages (120 color ill.)
 
52.00
 
ISBN : 978-3-906803-95-1
EAN : 9783906803951
 
in stock


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