Stopping time again – The Leica camera Blog

Following his long-term project Europea, in which various locations came together to form a dense selection of images, the new series by the Stockholm-based photographer focuses purely on the Romanian capital – as always in black and white and photographed with his Leica M6. An interview by Andrei Becheru with his friend and colleague Joakim Kocjancic about his new Bucharest project, will accompany the planned photo book. Here is an excerpt from the conversation about the city, its people, street photography and what is special about analogue technology.

You arrived in Bucharest for the first time in October 2019. What was the feeling that made you start a new long-term project?
I remember my first visit to Bucharest very well. I took the bus from the airport and got off at Romană Square. It was a sunny and warm autumn day. From the roundabout I walked into Mendeleev Street and it was like opening a door into a new world. Old buildings from the 19th century, art deco houses, electrical cables hanging everywhere, so many layers of time, life, people…I was immediately fascinated and attracted to it. I felt at ease with the city life and its people. I felt I could communicate on the same level, even if I didn’t know the language.

And there was also a literary coincidence that connected you with Bucharest…
Yes, returning to Stockholm, I discovered the book Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu and got completely hooked. I never read something so surrealistic, it was just too much. I was amazed that somebody could have so much imagination. While reading the book I discovered that many of the places that are described in the pages, were the ones that I just started to love about Bucharest. This made my connection with the city even stronger. I could dream of Bucharest in Stockholm, while reading Cărtărescu’s book, and got to know the city a bit using satellite images on Google maps.

You then returned to Bucharest several times to work on the new project.
Yes, at that time, after closing my long-term Europea project, I needed to start something completely new. In Bucharest I could just dive into it and be completely absorbed, almost like Alice in Wonderland, entering a new unknown world. For me this city has this dreamy atmosphere. I have always been attracted and fascinated by the passing of time and I especially like places where the layers of time are not covered up. It’s somehow a kind of raw honesty that I like, that doesn’t make life perfect, that doesn’t stop the flow of life. My view is romantic, of course, and I’m also aware that in many situations I don’t see or show the suffering of certain places and people. I’m looking for another kind of beauty with different aesthetic rules. What I’m after is to show beauty or the enigmatic qualities of normal things or situations, that we usually just think are ugly or unimportant.

You say that the streets of a city are like an open theatre. Would you call what you do street photography?
What I do is a kind of photography that looks at the very mundane things that we usually overlook. It’s more poetic, existential and subtle. But yes, the streets are where I fell in love with photography, all those parallel universes coming together, passing by, melting into one another, quickly crossing the urban environment, and the spontaneity of that kind of photography, not arranged or theatrically set up, just letting it be and observing, fantasizing, dreaming – an open theatre. It’s the energy, the intensity of life that I find attractive. In one way what I do is street photography, but at the same time it’s not… I’m not interested in a kind of artificial street photography or where it’s only about colour and composition.

In Bucharest you decided that you wanted to start doing portraits of teenagers, the younger generation. Why?
The choice of subject was instinctual and swift. I was more attracted to the younger generation. They really jumped out for me compared to the rest of the people. They have a very specific way of dressing, each with their own style; and I saw them as confident, real and non-pretentious. I also wanted to get as far away as possible from eastern clichés. I also think that in Bucharest the circumstances are unique with the younger generation that I met, who grew up with the internet outside of the Ceausescu era. I felt I knew them, and it was not difficult to relate to them; like seeing myself when I was a teenager searching for my own identity.

Every picture that we see in your work is a gelatine silver print, that you make with digital scanning, to be inserted in your books or used in various publications. As you said, you have kept on working exclusively with analogue film since you started. What do you find fascinating about this medium, and what makes it so important for your own process?
The darkroom has been an integral part of my practice, almost as important as taking photos, irretrievably connected. I tried digital in the past, but I was never satisfied with the results or the process. In front of the screen, it’s easy to be too controlling, to be perfect, it’s too mental. Analogue work is organic, you touch it, you smell it, you feel it. It’s also about the relationship to the subject that I‘m photographing: it’s honest, it’s raw. There are no filters, and I can’t alter the image too much. It is what it is. That’s the magic of it, not having total control; you accept the laws of life and its unpredictability. Working in a darkroom is kind of sacred. A special moment where you dive into the work or yourself like in an introspective meditation. You take a break from the outside world. It’s like stopping time again, first inside the camera and then in the darkroom.

Even his family history is international: Joakim Kocjancic was born in Milan in 1975 of Slovenian roots, the child of a Swedish mother and Italian father. Since then he has lived in many European cities. After studying painting in Florence and Carrara from 1998 to 2002, he got an MA in Photojournalism in London, in 2005. He is based in Stockholm since 2006. Following Paradise Stockholm (2014, Journal) and Europea (2020, Max Ström), Bucharest is his third large, long-term project. Find out more about his photography on his website and Instagram channel.

See also the portfolio Bucharest in issue 4.2024 of the LFI magazine.
The portfolio Europea appeared in issue 6.2021 of the LFI magazine.