Well well well, this is one blog post that almost didn’t happen.
The story starts about three years ago in a photo class I organized. Talking about books and photo series, the discussions led from street-photography to long time projects. I think it started with Vivi Maier and here duck-face selfies photobooks. I cannot remember quite well but generally the topic floated around the idea that you cannot work on long term projects you do not love.
There was this guy with a street shot with a lady standing on one leg looking like she stepped in dog poop. Lousy photo, in my humble opinion. “Best photo ever”, if you consider today’s street-photography standards (juxtapositions, funny, colored, contrast). He came to me after the meeting and said he was working on a project. About cars.
Personally I cannot see myself shooting photos of cars. I don’t love them. When I learned the car is a DACIA then all my bad memories as a child came back, mostly being car-sick in a DACIA 1100. So basically no good memories about that car. No sex in the car, no late night driving with friends after parties, no vacations around the country in it, and no other thing I can list here that I can think of.
I saw some of the first photos from the project, and were definitely taken by someone with opposite feelings about Dacia car than me. We talked a lot. We brainstormed. We documented ourselves on previous car projects. We analyzed almost everything. We thought we we’re on the right track. When suddenly, on the side of the road, there was a little girl with big hair, hitchhiking. Or maybe she was a police-woman. Anyway she was the twist in out plot.
Cristina Irian bought a new dimension to the project and drove it on documentary roads, on anthropological roads and parked it in front of the people’s houses. She added a new skilled driver to the team, Valentin Maier. Both of them worked on the documentary part of the project, alongside the photographer and people from the Dacia community, more than passengers in this trip we took. A project, a labour of love but very difficult nevertheless.
“DACIA 50 Autoturismul” book is a multilayered book: a documentation about the history of the car, a visual project and a heartwarming collection of stories from the people who’s cars had been photographed, plus a few other surprises to be discovered both in the book, in the community and on the official DACIA50.ro site.
Special thanks go to Mirela Petre and Ken Taranto for their keen eye on text or post-processing of images. As always, for all promotional materials, drafts, tests and all crazy stuff we went to Azero.ro / MyPoster.ro and Ciprian Furtuna. The team consisted of OMNIA PHOTO Publishing House and Albert Adrian VRĂBIUȚĂ, Cristina IRIAN, Valentin MAIER, www.traduce.re, Paul Adrian FARCAȘ, Alex CRUCERU and yours truly.
The project was a huge effort on everyone, without any financing or support from any institution or private company. The few people that helped believed in us and in the project, because it is not a personal project, it is something that had to be done. For us all, for our own memory. The book is in limited edition and can be purchased online here: http://dacia50.ro/. By doing so you ensure the continuity of this project and support the independent publishers in delivering quality material and nice stories to the public. Thank you.
Book details:
DACIA 50 Autoturismul
Bucharest, 2018. ISBN 978-606-94598-0-5
Limited edition, 300 books. A4 format, 124 pages, offset print, color, matte paper, hardcover imagewrap
OMNIA PHOTO Publishing House
Albert Adrian VRĂBIUȚĂ (photos), Ana-Cristina IRIAN (text, documentation), Valentin MAIER (text, documentation),
www.traduce.re (translation), Paul Adrian FARCAȘ (graphics), Alex CRUCERU (proofreading) and your truly, Cristian BASSA (editor)
