Documentary Photography Audience Engagement Grant Application Open Society Foundations

Photography Partner: Sorin Onior Romania, May, 2011

NARRATIVE PROPOSAL People of Danube Delta, Romania. Visual representations

1. Topic The Danube Delta, one of the most valuable wetland areas in Europe, combines ecological value with a largely unrecognized cultural complexity. Once the region declared Biosphere Reserve, in 1991, and added on the Unesco list of World Heritage Site, the local population (about 16.000 people) occurred to be excluded from the list of management priorities. The region exists under the stigma of marginality, being a place at the end of the world. Media sources mention primitivism related to the inhabitants, and tourism is the only hope for a "resurrection", both from the point of view of the population and of the local institutions. Obstacles as water barriers or lack of infrastructure make the development of tourism slow and fragile, and the Danube Delta a region of interwoven paradoxes. People suffer from a lack of quality education, of economical resources and from social exclusion. As a photographer, I feel that my life and work are dedicated to people from Romanian villages. I think of my work as a moral duty, that of documenting and chronicling visual narratives, of giving voice to people that are not usually put to talk. In 2008, Ms Elena Dinu, producer in History and Religion Department in TVR1 (Romanian National Television) contacted me and invited me to become their image partner in People of Delta fundraising campaign. After three years of photographic trips in many regions of Delta, I have become attached to these people and their problems. As a visual anthropologist, not only a photographer, I wish to bring a profound contribution to the promotion and education regarding people of Danube delta. I intend to collaborate with film directors that have produced documentaries on this topic, and most of all, to give people I have photographed the chance to take pictures themselves, and to spread our common work in the country and the world.

2. Audience We are trying to reach three types of target audience (audience 1 and 2 - active audience; audience 3 potential future active audience).

Documentary Photography Audience Engagement Grant Application Open Society Foundations

Photography Partner: Sorin Onior Romania, May, 2011

1.

People from some of the most isolated villages of Danube Delta of any age. The photo camera in peoples hands will have the role to make them reflect on their lifes environment. It is important that they bring an own perspective on their way of living.

2.

Potential public speakers (students in Cluj-Napoca and other cities of Romania, in the fields of journalism, social sciences, cultural studies, sociology, arts, tourism, other fields). This project has an educational mission: to change the young generations perspective regarding people from Danube Delta, by providing correct information about the difficulties they face and by proposing a different, more positive approach to this culture. Our aim is to provide this category of audience an educational tool through visual documents in order to raise their curiosity regarding Danube Deltas people, and the desire to discover themselves what is beyond the pictures and films they see. We think students are a proper medium of dissemination of a civic action. Our project should shape their way of seeing, conceiving, ultimately, of writing and speaking about people of Delta. These two target audiences will meet in Cluj-Napoca through the exhibition and through the postcards (see project description).

3.

Potential future active audience: tourists or potential tourists, Romanian and foreign citizens, public and private institutions, media. Interaction tools: postcards resulted from the workshops, projects Facebook page, promotion of the project on TVR1.

3. Goal & Impact Our goal: education of our target audience through photography and visual arts. We aim to inspire and engage our target audience, by giving voice to people living in Delta on one hand, and by raising curiosity and shape a new way of perceiving deltaic communities, on the other hand. Our project is a strategy for disseminating information through documentary photography and film, in order to obtain a more assumed way of seeing and writing about deltaic issues and communities. Through the photography workshop, we are expecting growing awareness regarding ones own space and lifestyle. When it comes to presenting your own life, the choices you make in the process of taking pictures, might change the way of thinking about your own life. The photo camera in peoples hands should also have the role of raising curiosity to see the world outside the Delta.

Documentary Photography Audience Engagement Grant Application Open Society Foundations

Photography Partner: Sorin Onior Romania, May, 2011

Through the photography exhibition, photo album, postcards, the Facebook page of our project and other media, we aim to turn a local issue into a national concern. Our project should lead to a feeling of responsibility from decision makers, to a general growing of awareness about the needs of the delta population, and eventually, we would hope for an improvement of the life of the people to which we are dedicating our project.

4. Project Our project consists of activities implemented in two main locations: a) 3 villages from Danube Delta, where we propose: 1. Photography workshops for people from three isolated villages from Danube Delta 2. Research field work - Chronicle the way people experienced the photography workshop b) Cluj Napoca, ClujEst- Point of visual research, where we propose: 3. People of Delta Sorin Onior photography exhibition 4. Documentary film projection and open discussions in the frame of the exhibition Material results of the activities: 1. postcards with workshops photographs 2. People of Delta photo album, by Sorin Onisor The photography workshops, led by Sorin Onior, with people from Letea, Periprava and C.A. Rosetti. We believe that by putting a camera in peoples hands, we offer an instrument of power, trying to transform in a way, for a little while, the viewed into viewer. Usually photographers are choosing what they want to see and show. We wish to give people an impulse for showing us all the way they see their own world and the chance of describing it. The aim of the workshop is the creation of a visual discourse of the self. A selection of the pictures of the workshop will be posted on Casiana Association and on Facebook page of the project and printed as postcards to be distributed in: schools, tourist info centers, post offices and bookshops and hotels from Delta, Cluj Napoca, Bucharest and other cities in Romania. During the events in Cluj Napoca our public will receive postcards and will be asked to write a message to the author of the picture. These personalized postcards will be centralized, scanned and archived, then sent together to the addressees. This way, we wish to establish communication between our main target

Documentary Photography Audience Engagement Grant Application Open Society Foundations

Photography Partner: Sorin Onior Romania, May, 2011

audience groups. We will also award around five of the best participants of the delta workshop with participation at the events in Cluj. The photography exhibition People of Delta, by Sorin Onior, will take place in ClujEst Point of visual research. In the frame of the exhibition we will include a documentary film projection in order to generate open discussions on the topic of people from Danube Delta. The film we are proposing is Birds way, 2009, by Vlad Naumescu, external Partner in this project. The film presents the spiritual life of staroverii (in translation: old believers, the name of the community following the old Russian orthodox Gregorian calendar) living in Periprava, one of the villages where we will organize workshops. We perceive the documentary film projections as an educational tool for our audience number 2. The photo album of the project, would be a first photography album dedicated to people of delta. We consider it necessary because it represents a material support that can go beyond the space of the exhibition itself. The album will contain the photographs of the exhibition and records with peoples experiences of the workshop. The postcards and the album will be essential tools to convey further our message and to transcend, in a metaphorical way, peoples physical isolation. The Facebook page People of Delta, will be a major medium of communication, where we will post and continuously update information and images related to the project. We consider Facebook a useful interaction tool, in order to obtain a fast and large number of feedbacks. People can post comments, vote for the pictures, make notes, express their opinion and share it. The Facebook page will appear on projects stickers, posters, photo album and postcards and on the other websites involved. As follow up activities of the project we intend to archive all media feedbacks of the project and to organize an evaluation week for the three partners and other participants in the project. We will analyze and evaluate the results of the project and its potential future improvements and developments.

5. Responsibilities - Photography Partner My main role in this project is to illustrate the life of the people living in the Danube Delta Romania, as I see it; to illustrate as realistically as I can, their work, their homes, their lives, their sorrow and dreams. I wish to challenge our audience, to provoke to further discussions and raise their interest in this community. I perceive my position as an intermediary, from a photographic point of view, between Delta people and the world. I first interacted with people from Delta through my photo camera. Now I feel

Documentary Photography Audience Engagement Grant Application Open Society Foundations

Photography Partner: Sorin Onior Romania, May, 2011

the need to develop this relationship and interact in a different way as well, through images. I wish to step out of this power position in order to create a dialogue and launch a knowledge transfer. Together with my partners, I will lead the photography workshop in the three delta villages. Regarding the projects events in Cluj, my purpose is, again, to create an interactive frame, in order to obtain engaged reactions from our target audience. I expect a fruitful exchange of experience from this interaction, and also from the collaboration with my partners, and the workshop with people of delta. At the events in Cluj, I will present and represent our project. I am completely committed to our project and will dedicate all the necessary time for the implementation of all activities stipulated in our project.

6. Partners My partners in this project are: Casiana Association in Tulcea - president Romeo Ispas and ClujEst Point of visual research in Cluj-Napoca - president Sebestyn Gyrgy Szkely. Casiana Association will be our main support in the organization of the workshops stipulated in the project, and all the activities it implies. Beyond our rich professional collaboration during the charity campaign (2008-2013), president Romeo Ispas has become, during these years, a friend. He supports my activities in Delta with transportation and information, and a lot of my understanding of the deltaic issues are due to discussions with him. I know he is emotionally involved and I also have knowledge about their continuous work and efforts to enhance the level of education of the children and the life of people from the villages in Danube Delta. ClujEst association has a main role in our project, being not only our distribution partner, but also the partner with whom I have conceptualized and written this project. ClujEst is not a simple exhibition place, their approach on photography and arts in general brings a more socially involved view and introspection, having a particular interest in representations of silent/non-seen parts of Romanian society. Ms. Ioana Bursan, anthropologist and project assistant of ClujEst, has a research on her own on Delta People, so we realized that our apparently separate work can naturally complete each other on the same goal. Consequently, beyond the fact that ClujEst location in the middle of the country (Transylvania) makes it the appropriate distribution partner, I think a collaboration between a photographer and a visual research center is a perfect recipe for this project.