Photomanipulation nominee

what doesn’t kill you doesn’t make you stronger;
it makes you vulnerable, woundable and scarred
it wipes off parts of yourself you wish you could keep
but they are gone forever, irreplaceable.


what doesn’t kill you doesn’t make you stronger;
and i
i could have been better off without going through hell
i would have been another self
and shape my way through life without all the hurt
from which healing was never guaranteed.


what doesn’t kill you doesn’t make you stronger;
i am not who i am thanks to the pain i was in
but despite of it.
i stopped believing in purgatories –
life shouldn’t be an infern
nor a heaven.
we should all be allowed to progress in a balanced way
working on our own passages
towards alternative selves.

I am a 26-year-old visual artist and freelance photographer interested in Visual Anthropology and Storytelling, constantly looking for new ways to nurture self-expression. In 2016 I graduated from the Bucharest National University of Arts, Photography and Video department, and in 2018 I successfully completed an MA degree in Ethnology, Cultural Anthropology and Folklore at the University of Bucharest.

My artistic roots can be found during my childhood and adolescence, when I engaged with painting, music and writing. At the age of 13 I came across the works of Magnum photographers, which later became a representative moment in my evolution as a visual artist.

As a photographer, I tend to pursue a fine art approach to each genre I focus on at a specific time. I situate my work somewhere near the thin line between reality and fiction, easily floating from one side to another. In the last couple of years, I have withdrawn inspiration from Cultural Anthropology, exploring themes such as family, identity, dynamics of tradition or body.