Maramures 2009 (46 images)

Maramures, Romania. March 2009. A continuation of my long term project on the most traditional rural life in Europe.

I have photographed in the Maramures region of northern Romania, home to the most traditional rural life in Europe, for the past eight years. In 2003, I lived and farmed with a family for 10 months in the small village of Valeni and my experiences amongst the peasants over the years, have been the high points of my life. In January 2007, Romania joined the European...
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Maramures, Romania. March 2009. A continuation of my long term project on the most traditional rural life in Europe.

I have photographed in the Maramures region of northern Romania, home to the most traditional rural life in Europe, for the past eight years. In 2003, I lived and farmed with a family for 10 months in the small village of Valeni and my experiences amongst the peasants over the years, have been the high points of my life. In January 2007, Romania joined the European Union and strict EU agricultural standards now threaten the centuries-old way of life. I want to personally savor this magical, peaceful place before it vanishes forever and the act of photographing has offered me a way to do so.

Life in the thirty-odd villages that lie scattered along four idyllic valleys near the Ukraine border still revolves around the seasons. Farming is non-mechanized and cone shaped haystacks made with scythes and wooden pitchforks dot rolling hills lined with plum and apple trees. Most houses are still without running water. Nowhere else in Europe do folk costumes persist so strongly with elaborate traditions and Romanian Orthodox ceremonies dominating village life.

Welcomed into homes wherever I went for toasts of plum brandy, onto horse carts fetching haystacks, and beckoned to weddings and folk festivals, I was treated as an old friend and realized that the peasants of Maramures, though poor by Western standards, are far from impoverished; they enjoy a life full of simple pleasures and a strong communal bond.

The 21st century world is moving further and further away from its agrarian past. In the coming years a spectacular way of life that is intimately connected to the land will be transformed by the effects of EU membership and I wonder what this continued march towards globalization will mean for all of us?
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