Traditional Romanian land explored by the photographer Rena Effendi

As per today’s “What we like” post we chose the article wrote on www.instituteartist.com  about Transylvania, a traditional Romanian land, a story which Rena Effendi tells after having an amazing experience in a place like Maramures, where she stayed in a 800 people village named Hoteni.

Two months in the fields, shooting and experiencing the life that the Maramures people where living day by day.

“People spend the day in the field,” she said. “They take their food, they take naps. You see these women climbing on top of the haystack in special trousers so the wind doesn’t blow up their skirts.”

Ms. Effendi asked one family why they kept doing what they do, when they could simply go to a market. “They said, ‘Well, what are we going to do with all this land, then?’ ” she recalled. ” ‘It’s just going to sit there?’ ”

A farmer in Breb told Adam Nicolson, writing for the July 2013 issue of National Geographic, that houses there had cost six haystacks in Communist times. “Hay is gold,” It is also an art: “You can even guess who the owner is by the shape of a haystack,” she said. “They have their individual styles and forms.”

But, while Maramures still has the look of a fairy tale, it is on the verge of vanishing.

Visit the full article and gallery on www.instituteartist.com

Born in 1977 in Baku, Azerbaijan, Rena Effendi has been photographing since 2001. From the outset, Effendi has focused her documentary work on the oil industry’s effects on people’s lives in her own country. As a result, she followed a 1,700 km oil pipeline through Georgia and Turkey, collecting stories along the way. This work of six years was published in 2009 in her first book “Pipe Dreams: A Chronicle of Lives along the Pipeline”.

With several international photography awards such as “Fifty Crows” Documentary Photography award, Mario Giacomelli Memorial Fund award, and Getty Images Editorial grant , Rena Effendi continues to expend her work and looks for all greate creations of this world through the camera lens.

Photo source: instituteartist.com 

Ioana Toader, Access Romania Online