How did you get involved in photography? What your first shots were about?

Adrian Catu (AC): I was twelve when my school organized a trip to the mountains. I didn't have hiking boots or even a backpack, but for some reason, the first thing I asked my parents for this trip was a camera. I ended up getting a very old Russian range finder Smena. Still, have memories of documenting that hike. In particular, photographing an older girl whom I liked, but had no courage to express my feelings. So the camera became a great reason to approach her. Around the same time, my mother brought home 2 issues of the National Geographic magazine, American editions. Their quality amazed me, I felt like they were coming from another planet, way beyond everything I had seen in Socialist Romania. It was a memorable experience, it mattered a lot to me.


© Adrian Catu, from the series 'The last miners', 2016

Tell us about your educational path. You used to work in software engineering, how did you make the transition to photography and anthropology?

AC: I am self-taught in photography. For 15 years, I worked as a software engineer and IT product manager, although my formal university education was in designing microprocessors, not in software. Even though my acquaintance with photography happened very early (I developed my first black and white film at the age of 12), I have abandoned it for a decade, during my high school and university. But in 2000, with the first money I earned at a new company, I bought a camera. And started to take pictures, usually during holidays and travels. Photography became my escape from stress, so I began to spend more time just looking at photos on the Internet, reading, studying. Around 2006 began to shoot commercially, private events and portraits.

In 2009 I was lucky enough to participate in a speleological expedition to Madagascar, and this is how I published my first article in National Geographic Romania. It was a symbolical milestone, but the publication didn't change my life. In 2014, I graduated from a Masters program in Anthropology. At that time, I was spending more time learning about photography and anthropology than I was spending at my full-time job. So abandoning my software career and jumping into photography seemed like a natural step. I was enthusiastic for the first week, desperate for the next 25, broken for the next 78, but after two years it started to look sustainable. In 2010 I had completed a photojournalism course, my only formal education in photography. Later, together with the friends and colleagues, I met during this course we cofounded documentaria.ro, a platform for documentary photography and photojournalism.


© Adrian Catu, from the series 'The last miners', 2016

In parallel, I started my Ph.D. research about the community in Burkina Faso in Africa, which peacefully lives alongside wild crocodiles. These people consider crocodiles a gateway to the spirits of their ancestors and, strangely enough, the crocodiles are not attacking them. I find it very interesting to observe the interspecies communication and how the particularities of this relationship are encoded in local culture and, circularly, influences the relationship itself.

What was it like growing up in Bucharest in the 1970s-80s? How in your opinion the did city change over the decades (socially, culturally, visually)?

AC: Growing up in Bucharest at that time felt like living in prison, and I do not refer to the Socialist era specifically. There were other factors to it. It was a prison built by authorities, citizens, and lifestyle. To give an example, as a child I grew up with the idea that I need to be a good citizen, a good person, who has to have a day job, from 9 to 5, and needs to work in highly productive industry. And choosing a liberal profession like photography, being an entrepreneur, seemed something bad in my child mind. Also, after acquiring camera as a boy, it never occurred to me that I could use it in this city because I grew up with the idea that it is forbidden, that it could get me in trouble. To the authorities, taking pictures on the streets was suspicious, so didn't seem like something a good citizen would do.

My family was against the Socialist regime, and I knew about it, but at the same time, we were living and following these rules. For example, when I quit my full-time job, for at least 6 months, I felt like an outcast. Editing photos at Bucharest coffee shops, on a weekday, thinking, "OMG, all the decent people must be at work, in the office, and I'm sitting here, like a parasite." And I had this feeling because of my childhood years.


© Adrian Catu, from the series 'The last miners', 2016


© Adrian Catu, from the series 'The last miners', 2016

Apart from that, I also remember a lot of violence, violence on multiple levels. One of my elementary school teachers used to beat kids very harshly, you were lucky if that were just a slap. He would go as far as beating children with a hard stick. Once my 2nd-grade teacher hit a girl with her head against the blackboard. Violence on the school sports court, where bigger boys used to ransack or beat us to steal a few coins we could have in our pockets. And this violence continued into high school, where teachers also could slap students. There also was a lot of violence and bullying among the students themselves. Also, this idea of obedience in school, everything was black and white, the lessons meant to represent absolute truth, and you could not question that information. I remember in the 8th grade we had exams in Romanian language and math to enter the high school. In Romanian, we were memorizing book reviews dictated to us by the teacher, instead of learning to express our opinion on a subject. We were pushed to memorize state-approved reviews word by word.


© Adrian Catu, from the series 'The last miners', 2016

How do you choose your projects?

AC: It is a very tough question. I don't think I have a pattern. Sometimes, it just occurs in a second, like an impulse. Other times it is a plan that I'm creating together with some reporters. For example, my project Last Miners, which I started in October 2015. Coal mining in Romania is fading away. Eventually, the mines will be shut down, and I photograph what I feel to be an identity crisis of a community.

It started with a colleague - an anthropologist, she proposed me a subject, but then I continued on my own. It took me a year to understand that it is about an identity crisis. The question touched me on a deep level because this is a shadow of socialist Romania, the coal miners took a significant role in the history of our country.


© Adrian Catu, from the series 'The last miners', 2016


© Adrian Catu, from the series 'The last miners', 2016

After Romania did overthrow Ceaușescu, the new power wasn't apparent. Within a few months, people realized that his replacement is coming from a former communist party, from the communist elite, and they were not going to build democracy, so people started to protest. And the power has manipulated the miners to come to Bucharest and "defend the state." It happened during my high school time, and there was incredible violence, with miners attacking civilians with bats or hammers, or arresting them, just because they were wearing jeans, glasses, long hair or beards! It was a clash between people who wanted a change towards Western style democracy and people who were afraid of that change and rather tried to save the status quo. Soon after that, the miners were very marginalized, everybody started to see them as uneducated brutal and violent people. When I had a chance to go to the mining community, I was curious to find out who these people really were. (Still affected by my youth memories). I was surprised to meet some truly amazing people.


© Adrian Catu, from the series 'The last miners', 2016


© Adrian Catu, from the series 'The last miners', 2016

Being trained in mathematics and programming, I still have overpowering logical thinking. So in some cases, I work out my projects from concepts. But I prefer when bodies of work start from photos and feelings because this way they are more intimate, more sincere, more visual. The projects that begin with concepts have luggage of the words, so those pictures are not flying free. I prefer pure visual projects. I think the real strength of the visual language is showing concepts and ideas which can be felt but cannot be put in words.

How do you establish your access?

AC: We called the mining company and received some support from them. It all started one week before one of the oldest mines in Romania, Petrila, was scheduled to get shut down. We wanted to document that moment that week, so we had a very tight schedule. And the company agreed, they let us photograph everywhere except underground. One morning, I went to the director and said, tomorrow this mine will close after more than a century, and nobody will ever go there again: "Do you really want to have no record of how it looked on this last day?!" The director looked at me for a few seconds and then said: "Tomorrow morning at six be at the main pit." So I made photos on the last day this mine functioned.


© Adrian Catu, from the series 'The last miners', 2016


© Adrian Catu, from the series 'The last miners', 2016


© Adrian Catu, from the series 'The last miners', 2016

How well was I received there? Most of the people were very open, but at the same time, they saw me as the press, which they did fear since the 90s. Because of the negative image that has been following them as a community. They expressed that the media is always biased and uses cliches to describe them. I remember that I just was being honest, that this is not superficial journalism, but something different. There was one thing that I think was missing. I found them accepting me, but I couldn't capture the level of authenticity I wanted. After being underground with them - they started to respect me much more. And they were right about it. In a way, it was my initiation. Without going underground, I would have never understood what it means to work as a miner.


© Adrian Catu, from the series 'The last miners', 2016


© Adrian Catu, from the series 'The last miners', 2016

Everyone knows pictures of miners with coal and dirt on their faces, but nobody knows from photos, how it gets there. I assumed that they are working, sweating, and the dust gets on their faces from their hands. But it's not true, I was cautious, carrying a camera, never touching my face, but after 3 hours underground, it was precisely as dirty. It's the coal dust from the air that they have to breathe every day. There's mud, everything is slippery, just getting to the workplace is an adventure. Everything is unstable, for instance, I was trying to move one meter in a different direction when the crew chief commanded me "Back!", I moved, and in three seconds a huge rock fell from the ceiling. I asked how did he know, but they just feel that kind of things because they are so used to it. Also, the lights can go off, and they said that they could see. I was skeptical about it, of course, they don't see the light, but they have a mental map of the mine and the tunnel.

There was an accident during my time there. Two people died, gallery crumbled. When the rescuers were trying to get them out, I visualized the death. And right now I could feel that it's like playing Russian roulette. With all the precautions and experience, they still play with death every day. Before this tragedy, I knew something was missing from the project, but I had no idea what it was. But after this experience, I felt my project was completed. As sad as it may sound, you can't speak of mining without speaking of death. Miners singing and joking while digging the grave of a colleague and friend, that's what I saw there - and it felt like one of the most precious and humane moments I have ever witnessed in my life, reminding of the fragility of life and our only weapons against it: gentle resilience, stubborn joy and defying humor.


© Adrian Catu, from the series 'The last miners', 2016


© Adrian Catu,  from the series 'The last miners', 2016


© Adrian Catu, from the series 'The last miners', 2016

How did this experience change you?

AC: I realize that most of my projects transform me in the same way. They teach me about the inner beauty of human beings. Doing projects in more or less marginal communities makes me discover beauty and compassion. The negative things miners have done in the 90s were real. But they were not fully aware of what they were doing, they genuinely believed the state is under sedge. As a result, they are being blamed for decades. Some of my own friends were telling me, "are you crazy to go there, they'll beat you!" I think that media coverage can be hazardous in that way. A lot of things happen on day to day basis, people show empathy to each other even without realizing it, and nobody talks about it.


© Adrian Catu, from the series 'The last miners', 2016


© Adrian Catu, from the series 'The last miners', 2016

I remember when I was in my anthropology school, I went to do research in a dangerous neighborhood in one of the Romanian cities. People were telling me not to go there. That people who live there are criminals and killers. So a colleague of mine and I were doing fieldwork. I started in one corner of the neighborhood. Knocking at the doors, interviewing people, asking what do they think about this community, what do they feel about their neighbors? "Oh, my neighbors are terrific people, but the other side of this block is absolutely dangerous, it is a horrible neighborhood, there are fights every night." I went to the opposite street and received the same comments about the side I just visited. They were repeating the things, that media labeled them with. Sure it was partially true, but not entirely. I met a lot of decent people. So I really don't believe in labels. They simplify our life, but also drastically limit us from understanding its nuances. Imagine pictures having just strictly delimited shapes, nothing overlapping, everything aligned - and always the same objects, the same trees, the same cars, the same "caucasian" or "black" person in every picture: this is how the labels show us the world. To me, the beauty is in diversity.

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LINKS
Adrian Catu
Documentaria.ru 
Urbanautica Romania