Return

• Prize
• Photographer
  I'm an unaffiliated photographer who works on long term personal projects about memory, identity, personal history, displacement and war. My work has been awarded grants, fellowships and prizes from A, United States
• Studio
  photography
• Socials

The five submitted images are from a long-term project titled, "Return," about memory, identity, war and its aftermath. Begun in early 1990 with a series of train journeys through post communist Eastern Europe to retrace routes my family traversed as stateless Holocaust survivors in the aftermath of WWII, it has developed into a multi-layered body of work about the facets of reality that coexist in the present and about healing and reconciliation. Last summer I spent six weeks in my native city in southern Ukraine with the help of a grant from the Society for Photographic Education, and logistical help from the local Jewish Museum. I met many people and had a range of profound experiences. I plan to go back this coming summer to continue the work. Many of my friends have participated in the Euro Maidan and I'm sure I'll find a different kind of atmosphere than last year.

• Biography
  I’m a Romanian born art and documentary photographer who has lived and worked in Mexico, Europe and the United States. I work on long-term exploratory projects that are informed by themes of transience and loss, individual and collective memory and identity; the state of the world and the neighborhoods where I live. My longest running body of work, titled “Return,” consisting a series of solitary train Journeys through post communist Eastern Europe, to explore the terrain of my early childhood. which my mother, sister and I traversed as stateless refugees after WWII.
• Awards
  My photographic works have earned me grants, residencies and fellowships from a variety of sources, including Art Matters, The Aaron Siskind Foundation, CEC/ArtsLink travel grants, Light Work, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art; Austrian Ministry of Culture, Constance Saltonstall Foundation, Anderson Ranch Art Center, four fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts (1994, 1998/2008/2016) and the Creative Artists Project Grant by the Society for Photographic Education. My work have been exhibited regionally, nationally and internationally.