Large Format. A residency with Vlad Dragne

In his residency, Vlad Dragne investigated the relationship between people and images in a historical context, using large-format photographic techniques — sheet film and paper negatives. The work took the form of workshops, staged photographs, environmental portraits and street portraits that reflect the community's present identity and its history, bringing to light places, activities and people otherwise transparent or even invisible in society.

"The contrast between how quickly an image can be made on a phone and the laborious process of preparing, shooting, developing and making analogue prints reveals the hidden labour of a person shaping and curating their own image," he writes. The result always has something handmade about it — imperfect, but organic, and therefore sincere and unforced. His approach comes from within: "the camera does not look at the community, but together with it," the photographer serving only as mediator and catalyst.

The residency also produced a film series devoted to the historical memory of the third edition of F.I.D. — Football in Traian. Vlad Dragne is a second-year master's student in Photo-Video at the National University of Arts in Bucharest.