From the perspective of her childhood, the photographs by Loredana Nemes tell of the beauty of her hometown Sibiu and a life rooted in tradition: in one of the images in the beautiful series, bare feet and legs and a small tricycle hold the promise of an endless summer. Children play in the streets; adults also spend a great deal of time outdoors, gossiping with neighbors, encountering each other and the apparently untouched natural hinterland with a sense of infinite leisure.
Nemes, who had to leave her beloved Sibiu at the age of fourteen, juxtaposes the photographic idylls with poetic texts that impart a sense of the kinds of abrupt changes that must have occurred in her life when she fled socialist Romania. Internalized images are contrasted with photographic ones, adding the colors of childhood and imagination to the gray zones—the blood of a slaughtered pig, the colors of gummy bears, the stubborn fringe of a rug, or burned mother’s milk.