What is happening to the European workforce in the middle of the economic crisis?
Octavian Bâlea’s (b. 1984) picture series is about people hit by unemployment and about a deserted village. He investigates the changes in the lives of the local community in a city in Germany, from where the jobs provided by the Nokia factory are disappearing, and in a dwindling village in Romania, where all the villagers of working age have left for the new factory.
In 2010, Bâlea photographed the members of an Islamic community in Bochum, Germany. When the factory moved away, it left behind it unemployment and a transformed everyday life. He photographed the Romanian village of Rachis in Transylvania as a deserted ghost town in the aftermath of the mass exodus.
Bâlea returned to Rachis for a second photographing trip in 2011. By then, the village population had dropped to five. The ten-kilometre journey to Rachis wound through the forest, led by a guide carrying an axe in case of wolves. Bâlea recorded the residents in this decaying medieval settlement, as they remembered the past and waited for the end.
The Project had its beginnings when Bâlea took part in the Flexi-in-security project, in which ten journalist-photographer pairs were sent out to investigate what was happening to the European workforce in the midst of economic crisis. Bâlea worked with the journalist Georgiana Macovei, whose writings will be displayed at the exhibition to complement the story told by the pictures.
Program (in English):
Saturday 10.3. at 13-14: Bâlea tells about his pictures and Cinta Hermo Martín dances flamenco. Museum entrance fee.
Sunday 11.3. at 14-16: Bâlean tells about his Little color stories -photographs. Music by Sebastian Dumitrescu. Museum entrance fee.
The Finnish Museum of Photography
Project Space
The Cable Factory, The Cable Factory, Tallberginkatu 1 G, 00180 Helsinki
