[LIVE EVENT] Parallel Traces – An Artistic Perspective – YouTube

We are very grateful for the support we received during this two years of the project and we look forward to an even better 2021!

So congratulations on the launched event and we hope that this project is only a beginning of a beautiful journey that awaits us!

If you didn’t have the chance to follow our online event live, don’t worry – you can watch it below:

[LIVE EVENT] Parallel Traces – An Artistic Perspective – YouTube

And to always stay updated on our activities and events, don’t forget to follow us Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

We are very happy to announce a new online event: a live conversation exploring the artistic perspective of Parallel Traces!

Join us on December 1st at 15.00 CET here on Youtube, to learn more about the project through the words of our Guest Artists, Artistic Director, but also Coordinators and Project Officer. We are going to reflect on the artists’ journey and perspective, their relationship with Jewish Heritage but also on the current pandemic impact. Don’t miss it!

Didn’t have the chance to follow our last online event? No worries, you can find it here! The Sighet Online Opening Event was launched on November 15th and already has over 400 views, so thank you all for your support. The video will guide you through the beautiful journey of the Sighet exhibition, bringing a renewed look and perspective on the significance of european Jewish history and it’s urbanistic architecture, taking in account it’s past, present and future. The online event combines the photographic and short film artworks made by our guest artists and the winners of the contest, and a special interview with two of the Parallel Traces guest artists, moderated by Project’s Artistic Director, Rosa Juanco.

“Photography sparks your imagination, in order to provoke conversation” Israel Ariño from Spain.

“All kinds of stories that people told me, made me connect to the places through stories, through talking to people, and I think that was the important part of being in Sighet” Daniel Grunfeld from Romania.

And if you are in Sighet, don’t forget to stop by Adela Pop Studio (Str. Independentei 37, Complex Flora) to visit the exhibition in person. Due to the current Covid-19 measures the physical exhibition will have a limited-access on reservation-only basis, but don’t hesitate on visiting such an amazing cultural and artistic project, we will be delighted to see you around! To book a visit: RSVP- Alina Marincean 0740904135 emaill: peninah@frsighet.com

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Jewish Culture has a long, millennial history: as Rosa and Victor explain, the purpose of the project is to promote this heritage directly to the local community, in order to strenghten the connections with the story and the values of these sites. Rosa gives also an insight on our past exhibitions and on the  artworks created by the guest artists. She explains their creative process and the relation with their cities.

Curious? Check the video and our online gallery to have a virtual experience of the exhibitions. If you’re close to Girona, you still have the opportunity to see the exhibition at the Museum of Jewish History of Girona until December!

There is no aesthetics, really. The appearance of the work follows the pattern of its communication, but also the choices, the curation of the cultural heritage involved. It comes in time of the dissolution of photography as the time and memory based medium, its current state of it becoming a purely applied art, infinitely adaptable to all purposes and therefore, invisible. This creates a problem with its inherent, century old qualities when relating to the politics of memory – its diminishing ability to return the gaze to the viewer. There are still points of intersection with literature and its human performative foundation, the sound, the reading. With those, I have sought out where and how the origins of the current local concepts of Jewish identity and heritage were created, and are still visible, as well as audible. Incidentally Danilo Kiš wrote that there is no such thing as cultural heritage. For him, It was something lived and created every day.

To what extent and in what way does the topic of the Parallel Traces project match with your previous work?

The “Parallel Traces” project is a rare opportunity to try and build a personally re-defined version of the local history of cultural heritage. Not only that, but to present it as part of the network of different “readings” of the concepts of Jewish culture and heritage from very different facets of Jewish tradition, and in the context of differing cultural policies in the countries involved. The translation – based textual and audio part of the work is the direct extension of the methods I have been using regularly in researching the causes for editorial, curatorial choices in forming the cultural policies in different historical periods and locales.

“The “Parallel Traces” project is a rare opportunity to try and build a personally re-defined version of the local history of cultural heritage“

What is your source of inspiration for work that you will produce within the Parallel Traces project?

The primary choices will always be personal, of course. My growing-up in Belgrade Jewish community has fortunately given me a primary “memory vault” to draw upon. The persons whose facets of life and work I am weaving into the work are frequently the ones that were part of my childhood. Both the voices and music in audio, as well as the angles and shadows of photography are drawing on the tension between the present and that far-from idyllic past of the 70s and 80s.

Can you describe the process of creation of the artwork within the Parallel Traces project?

The methods are outwardly simple. I walk, look, read, remember, learn and listen. Taking photographs of what results opens the work to the unexpected. The intersections of meanings, their relevance and inter – referential structures are growing in complexity, pressuring the ability of the work to communicate to people outside the field of references. The framework for the works in this case is a given, but mercifully comfortable enough. The process of creation is hard to limit, as the work and its referential field always have a tendency to grow. Choosing how to highlight the small parts of that growth while keeping the rest visible, or at least hinted at, is the crucial part of the work for me, while avoiding to be overly technical or explanatory. The origins of the work, and the personal memories at its root are what gives me hope it may become relatable and relevant to others, as memories are triggered by images and sounds, and have the potential to connect people in ways I can hardly predict, but only hope for.

“…memories are triggered by images and sounds, and have the potential to connect people in ways I can hardly predict, but only hope for”

There isn’t one single reason for why I ended up working as a photographer. It just turned out to be a perfect combination of multiple factors that I enjoy very much. I did various other things before coming to photography at around the age of 32. Some of the factors that led me to photography were biographical: my grandparents on my father’s side were also photographers for example; other factors had to do with my theoretical interests in the anthropology of science. One major research project I did at university was to look at how we use imaging techniques and machines in astronomy.  I was trying to blur the lines between science, art and mythology, and reveal the connections between these three areas, but I don’t think I really managed to convince anyone that these things are constantly leaking into each other. If you would put me on the spot and make me really name one main reason for doing what I am doing, then I’d probably say something about how I am actually more interested in the process of making photographs, rather than in the resulting images themselves. What I love about this work is that it gives me a kind of free pass to go out into the world and just follow my intuitions and curiosities, connect with people and get a glimpse of “life worlds” that are completely new to me. I guess this concept of Lifeworld  (Lebenswelten) is an important part of my attitude towards photography. I was lucky to study anthropology with Tim Ingold, a thinker I admire immensely, and I suppose that this approach he developed that became known as the “dwelling perspective” is central to what I do. I love seeing things through other people’s eyes; connect to them and their places and then somehow share these experiences. I want to tell people, “Hey look at this thing! it’s beautiful and weird and amazing!”

“What I love about this work is that it gives me a kind of free pass to go out into the world and just follow my intuitions and curiosities”

What does Parallel Traces as a project mean for you?

It was very interesting for me to come to Sighet, pretty much the opposite side of Transylvania of where I am from, and explore Jewish traditions that at first felt quite different to the one I belong to. During my upbringing the Jews that were revered were Freud, Durkheim, Einstein and Kafka, and not the Rebbe of Satmar. I knew hardly anything about the orthodox Jewish schools of Maramures before starting to work on this project. I am happy I had a chance to explore this part of the Jewish people that I myself belong to. It really broadened the picture for me.

How was it like to shoot in Sighet for the project? Were there any relevant moments you would
like to recall? people you met, things you saw, interesting shots…

To be honest, Sighet was one of the best working environments I had experienced so far. From the start, I felt right at home there. Particularly the way in which people approach and talk to each other has a kind of simplicity and directness that I think is remarkable. Every day there was surprising and intense, and so many people I met seemed a little bit weird and interesting in ways that I loved. While in Sighet I started doing a series of portraits and I’m looking forward to publishing them in the future and share a whole bunch of really bizarre situations that these people led me into.  Apart from the people, I thought that the light and the colours in Maramures were phenomenal. Every place in the world has its own light and its own palette of colours and that is a really fascinating thing to observe and work with. I arrived in Sighet in early March, just when the snow was starting to melt and left these deep brown and greenish hues in the landscape. Heavy wintery clouds were often still in the sky, turning the sunlight into this diffused deep illumination that seemed to be coming from everywhere. It really made me wish I was a better landscape photographer.

“Every place in the world has its own light and its own palette of colours and that is a really fascinating thing to observe and work with”

I actually want to show you this one picture I took:

It was during a sudden hail and snow and rain that came upon us while in the middle of nowhere, and I think that it can tell you a lot about what kind of place Maramures is around this time of the year.

Share with us a story from your work/career.

I don’t know really, there’s so much happening all the time! What comes to mind is maybe this early period when I learnt photography from Manfred Wegener, a photojournalist who for thirty years worked more or less exclusively for a magazine in Cologne called StadtRevue. I also now work for them regularly. I basically spent about two years cycling after Manfred through the streets of Cologne assisting him and doing the odd assignment here and there under his mentorship. I have this image of him, of how he always had his tripod strapped to the frame of his bike like a lance and his camera just thrown over his shoulder, with his white curly hair flapping around, riding through the city like Don Quijote. I loved that time and I really learned a lot. At some point I wrote under a picture I framed for him for his birthday, that what I thought he actually taught me during that time was the ability to suddenly see the ordinary as unusually spectacular and to accept the extraordinary as naturally common.

Tell us about the person or/and a word/phrase that you carry with you all the time.

Well, I actually do have this little thing I take with me wherever I travel. It’s always in my bag somewhere. Someone gave it to me about ten years ago and I’m sure she would be very surprised to know that I still have it with me. It’s a little piece of thick cloth wrapped around a round coin made of clay. The shape of a fairy is imprinted into it. She is called the Road Fairy. The cloth wrapping the coin has a little prayer written on it. It’s in Hebrew and it goes like this:

My path
is this very step right now
and in every moment I can choose
to stop and to breathe
to look anew
to listen to my heart
and to remind myself
that the time is now.

Daniel Grünfeld
Daniel Grünfeld is an internationally published documentary photographer, currently living and working between Germany, Romania and Israel. Coming from a philosophy and social anthropology background, his main interests in photography are quasi ethnographic, though he ends up doing a lot of portraiture, fashion campaigns and architecture photography. Most of his work is for editorials and documentary projects that are published in books and magazines.
In recent years, apart from his commercial and editorial work, he began working on various assignments concerning Jewish history in Romania. Among the organizations and collaborating partners were: Centropa (Vienna), The David Berg Foundation (New York), The Hebrew University – Center for Jewish Art (Jerusalem), Anne Frank Zentrum (Berlin), Center for Hebrew Studies & Goldstein Goren Center for Israel Studies (Bucharest), JewishGen (New York), Claims Conference (New York).
Due to his background in cultural anthropology and as a descendant of Transylvanian Jews, he is seeking to extend his body of work at the intersection of documentary and artistic photography, as well as historical and ethnographic research.
As is probably the case with many photographers, his style, his topical interests and forms of publication, as he himself admits, are by no means definite. They are rather a constant work in progress, in which Daniel is always seeking to improve, keen on trying out new things and finding new ways of communication.