Swampy, rugged, intricate.
The Danube delta is Europe's largest estuary, a natural labyrinth of water and reeds covering some 3,500 km2. Located at the most peripheral point of the EU, between Romania and Ukraine, it is the place where Europe physically ends, sinking into the Black Sea.
The delta region is sparsely populated and lacks basic infrastructure.
The few villages scattered across the territory can only be reached by boat and sink into darkness as soon as the sun goes down.
Living in the delta means living in symbiosis with the landscape and its changes; Like minotaurs, the inhabitants live immersed in this labyrinth, enduring the emptiness it imposes. The regular and inevitable rhythm of the seasons influences their moods and habits, conditions their desires and establishes physical and mental barriers.
I spent four years immersed into the bowels of the Delta to document the deep bond between the wild territory and its inhabitants. I observed the landscape and its slow mutation, to experience how the regular and inevitable rhythm of the seasons influences moods and habits, conditions desires and establishes physical and mental barriers.
During this long process of research, the geographical and physical reality of the area gradually lost consistency, acquiring the psychological character of a real labyrinth.
Through a photographic record that intentionally fluctuates between anthropological observation and symbolic transfiguration, I have drawn my own map of the territory: an interpretation that transcends the physical and geographical reality of the marshes to question the deep meaning of the act of INHABITING.
Inhabiting a territory, inhabiting a labyrinth. Inhabiting ourselves.