I create chance encounters between people who are no longer here and the places where I am now.
This project grew out of a personal and cultural understanding of the presence of those who have passed away. In Moldova, where I grew up, there is a belief that the souls of the dead remain close to the living — watching over us, protecting us, and sometimes guiding us. After the death of my father, I became more aware of this invisible connection between the living and those who came before us.
Perhaps this is why people create folklore. We build stories around what we cannot explain, find signs in coincidences, and give meaning to things that might simply be chance. Not necessarily because we are naive, but because the idea that the visible world is all there is can be difficult to accept.
The people in these photographs are strangers to me. I find their old portraits at flea markets. I do not know their names, their stories, or the lives they once belonged to. I bring these unknown faces into the present through an analogue process of double exposure.
I first photograph landscapes, cities and places while travelling. I then rewind the exposed film and load it into the camera again, photographing the found portraits onto the same negatives. I deliberately give up control over the second exposure. I do not know where a face will appear, what it will overlap with, or how the two moments will merge.
My double exposures are built on this tension between chance and belief. A coincidence becomes a possible sign, and an accidental encounter can become a story.
The resulting images exist somewhere between documentary reality, memory and imagination. They are an exploration of our human desire to believe that the visible world may contain something more than what is accessible to our eyes.
