What do you see when you look at a photograph? Same image, so many ways to perceive it.
The author of these images tells us a bit about his work.
"Brâncuși - The monumental ensemble from Târgu Jiu" by Ștefan Neagu
"The endless column is like an eternal song that takes us to infinity, beyond any superficial pain and joy" Constantin Brâncuși, note from the workshop, Centre Pompidou
Because the roads have not taken me to this area so far, being in passing, I decided (with some emotion) to visit the monumental ensemble made by Brâncusi in Târgu Jiu. Emotion because I am a great admirer of the sculptor and his modus operandi, personally applying the idea of simplification to the essence in my photography. The monumental ensemble, atypical for the chosen theme - dedicated to the heroes fallen in the battles fought at the Jiu Valley in the First World War, does not depict soldiers with guns in hand, caught in full assault. Probably for this reason it was left behind for a quarter of a century, another reason being that the author was considered as one of the representatives of "cosmopolitan bourgeois formalism" - in 1951 the Romanian state, through representatives of the Romanian Academy and of the Ministry of Culture, not accepting his donation of the entire work...
From the whole ensemble, I chose to photograph three elements, perhaps the most depicted. The challenge was to use a camera from that period, and to "forget" everything I saw photographed, trying to draw on the white sheet of my mind, in the little time I had available, an instinctual vision of the monumental sculptures: the geometry of the repetitive pattern at the "Table of Silence", the eternal kisses hidden by the shadow of the leaves at the "Gate of the Kiss", and the "Column" that either gets lost in the sky or supports it altogether... The perfect harmony of simple forms.