Memories of childhood in a country one had to leave – photographer Loredana Nemes (b. 1972) follows them back to her Romanian hometown Sibiu.
She calls the black-and-white photographs taken there between 2002 and 2013 beautiful – an expression of her deep connection to the places of the past, which she also explores in poetic texts. Those inner images convey an impression of the caesura that the flight from the socialist country meant. beautiful also stands for those moments in which Nemes confronts a changed social present with an open eye. Women, worn by the exertions of life, rest on a park bench, children playing in the street flirt with the camera, boys acting casually on the edge of the village, a bow-legged dog as a guardian of fresh laundry, or a priest blessing not only the community but also the cars as a sign of modest prosperity: It is the rather quiet peripheral phenomena, the unspectacularly mundane of existence, that fascinate Nemes – captured in the faces, gestures and actions of the people, whom she always encounters with great empathy and a sense for the right moment between closeness and distance. The resulting ‘portraits’ are impressive in both content and form, and find their appropriate context in the landscape photographs that follow.
Loredana Nemes was born in Sibiu, Romania, the city where Klaus Iohannis, current President of Romania and current winner of the Charlemagne Prize, served as mayor for many years. In 1986 the family fled and moved to Aachen. Studied German and mathematics at the RWTH Aachen. 2001 move to Berlin. Since then Nemes has been working as a freelance photographer. Since 2006 numerous solo exhibitions and various teaching assignments for photography.
Curated by Sylvia Böhmer
An exhibition of the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in the context of the awarding of the Internationaler Karlspreis 2020 zu Aachen to Klaus Iohannis, President of Romania.
