Maria Draghici; sound: William S. Burroughs, No More Stalins, No More Hitlers, 1989

hope & nostalgy
Flash animation, comparative view between an Eastern European family archive and Western professional photographs, 2004.

Maria Draghici, a graduate of the Painting Department of the National University of Fine Arts in Bucharest, was born in 1978 in Ramnicu Valcea, Romania. She lives and works in Bucharest. The idea of hope & nostalgy is to establish some kind of framework where different responses could develop. I chose to approach two different realities: one personal, the family photos archive, the other as a universal archive. I want to find a connection between photography as an artistic gesture and amateur photography as a real document of life. I have to go somewhere to find my own traces. And the question is whether I go into known or into unknown territory.
It turns out to be something between two worlds: one as a concept of life made by an unknown author (east family archive / nostalgy / unprofessional photography); the other made by a distinct photographer (Western art catalogues/ hope / professional photography). The framework of these two different realities is photography as a documentary medium.

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