Project Statement
“So that the World Can See What I’ve Done” is a personal photographic project rooted in an intimate relationship: the one between my grandmother and myself. The title is taken from one of her spontaneous remarks during our photo sessions and becomes of key importance to the entire project—a simple desire to be seen, to leave a trace, even within a small, seemingly forgotten world.
The project documents the life of a Romanian countrywoman left alone in a small village in northern Romania, someone who, despite being nearly 90 years old, continues to manage on her own, living in a limited universe shaped by work, routine, and faith. The village becomes not only a space of endurance, but also of isolation, and my grandmother—both a protagonist and a witness of this world—embodies the fragility and dignity of a disappearing generation.
The photographs explore her everyday universe: the house, the yard, the village, and the small gestures that structure her life. The enthusiasm with which she accepted being photographed revealed a deeply human need for recognition. In the middle of one of our sessions, she ran inside to put on her traditional costume and carefully arrange her headscarf, convinced that the photographs would reach “the whole of the village.” Within the naivety of this gesture lie both the small world she inhabits and the universal desire to be seen and acknowledged.
Through this project, I do not merely document my grandmother’s life, but explore the relationship between memory, identity, and representation. Photography becomes a pretext for closeness, for intergenerational dialogue, and for preserving a world that, although marginal, remains profoundly alive. “So that the World Can See What I’ve Done” is both an act of love and a testimony to loneliness, dignity, and the need to matter, no matter how small the universe we live in.
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