Ciocanu, Romania

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Ciocanu is a small mountain village of about 40 families, situated in the heart of the Romanian Carpathians. It provides a magnificent view on Piatra Craiului, the most beautiful and, at the same time, most dangerous mountain range of Romania.
During winter, this region is very difficult to reach by car, so it took me a horse drawn sleigh ride to get there. The first few days were primarily a matter of getting used to the local winter weather conditions: snow up to one meter and temperatures as low as minus 15 degrees Celcius are not exceptional at all. My first introduction to life in the Romanian Carpathians resulted in these portraits of the local population.

A few days later I met the first family ever to settle in Ciocanu. Florin, the head of the family, was a lumberjack and a cross-country skiing champion in his former life, but now he is in retirement and mainly concerned with handling his cattle.


Comments

  1. Serge Van Cauwenbergh

    Ik kan deze reeks erg appreciëren! Het verhaal dat je erbij vertelt is belangrijk en geeft mij als buitenstaander/kijker toch het gevoel dat ik bij de mensen thuis zit. De sfeer in sommige beelden doet me een beetje denken aan mijn reeks over Tsjernobyl.

    • 2:25 pm on February 17th, 2009

  2. Nyklyn

    jawadde dadde, beklijvend

    • 2:33 pm on February 17th, 2009

  3. Titus

    Klopt Serge, in u reeks over Tsjernobyl zie ik taferelen die zo herkenbaar zijn als in Roemenië, het vertrouwen en de tijd die je daarvoor moet nemen zijn hier toch zeer belangrijke factoren.

    • 3:05 pm on February 17th, 2009

Your turn!


Titus Simoens was born on May 25th, 1985 in Ghent, Belgium.

After graduating in 2008 with a degree in photography at the Viso / Higro in Ghent, Titus completed a program for audiovisual techniques-photography in Antwerp where he won the “Nationale vereniging van Beroepsfotografen" award as a professional Belgian photographer. His thesis, 'Close to Romania', was presented in 'ScreenWorlds', an overview of contemporary photography at the Flemish Parliament, with a publication by Lannoo.

In 2009, Titus displayed his project called 'Haar en Hem' in the group exhibition 'Blue and Friends' at the Fotomuseum in Antwerp.

In 2009, Titus traveled to the United States on a two month journey where he worked on his his latest series, “Miles away”. In this work, Titus shows his audience the life of two young cowboys living on a “Cow Camp” in Idaho. This series was a part of Titus’s search for the real American cowboys and is still in post production.

Currently, Titus Simoens is a Deinze-based photographer, working also as an assistant to fashion photographer, Peter Verplancke, in Roeselare, Belgium and as a freelance photographer. Recently Titus joined the agency Globe reports.