Place / Living / Home

The most recent exhibition by Bogdan Gîrbovan, curated by Diana Marincu, can be seen until July 10 at CdRF Galeria/ Popa Tatu 68.

On June 9 and 13, starting at 6 PM, there will also be two guided tours with the artist.

Bogdan Gîrbovan (b. 1981) is an artist who constantly seeks “images that don’t exist” in his photographs—those visual presences we overlook, we pass by without noticing, not because we don’t see them, but because we don’t know how to look at them. Often, we lack the tools to access perspectives that are sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes monotonous, requiring patience and time—sometimes inquisitive to the point of irritation, other times full of irony and flavor—through which the artist approaches his subjects. If in past photography series, Bogdan Gîrbovan explored social hierarchies and power relations or differences in social status within communities, this time we see a search placed in the increasingly well-defined trajectory of marginal roads and forgotten zones, a direction he had begun in the project Two Months Nowhere. There, the impulse of self-isolation from the visual noise of a large metropolis manifested fully, aiming to reset the artistic language of photography by disconnecting it from everyday aesthetic oversaturation. Time slowed down, the eye cleared, and identity lines clarified. In continuity with that approach, we can also "read" the current project, perhaps his boldest yet, Place / Living / Home, a series of new photographs—of which we see a representative selection here—acting as a synthesis of these three essential concepts. The photographs result from an almost performative act by the artist, who wanted to observe with his own eyes—and the eye of the camera—what “man’s best friend” sees from inside its kennel. What is the image seen through the opening of this shelter, and what does it mean to substitute the dog’s body with the artist’s? The three photographs monumentalize the original shelter, into which the artist squeezed himself, almost restoring the dignity and scale it deserves. Each “window” cutout of the dog’s shelter symbolizes a stage in human architectural development: from the circle as a solar rosette symbol, suggesting a necessary spiritual development, to the arch supporting the edges of a cross vault, and finally the “little house” symbol, drawn by every child asked to represent “home.” Perspective, horizon, expectation—all are notions we can either heighten or cancel through the image. It’s up to us.

You have to think of an image that doesn’t exist.

Interview with Bogdan Gîrbovan by Diana Marincu, on the occasion of the Place / Living / Home exhibition.

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Diana Marincu: Dear Bogdan, let’s take a look together at what you’re doing lately: this theme of “dwelling” runs through your entire body of work, but recently it has taken on a new dimension and a shift in perspective. Why did you crawl into a dog kennel, Bogdan?

Bogdan Gîrbovan: As you already know, I didn’t just crawl into the dog kennel. I went into the pigsty, the duck coop, I climbed into the hen’s nest, I even rented a crane to look into a stork’s nest (though those are already man-made structures, built to help the birds not get lost in space and time). Then I stuck my hand into birds’ nests to see if I could somehow make another hole through which to look at what the bird sees from the riverbank. All this led to me finding a dog kennel with a hole in the back, a missing plank, and I thought, “Let’s look through that little gap.” So it was something born out of coincidence, a kind of research as an exercise in seeking through a mistake. When I bent down to see what the dog sees and looked through that ship porthole-like hole, the first photo came out—the one with the bones. I was fascinated by how the interior tells you something about the dog’s size or strength. And from all these multiple searches—which took me even to the cemetery, where I photographed pigeon nests that had found refuge there—this project was born. After taking that first photo from the kennel, I thought it was so powerful to get that close to man’s best friend in this way. And then I kept searching for kennels, though it was really difficult. I managed to photograph 12 kennels over 2 years.

D.M.: You can definitely tell they’re carefully chosen and each one is different. Even though you were already interested in dwelling, this time there’s an added layer. It’s also about shelter, with a slightly different nuance—when we think about the refuge, the place you hide.

B.G.: Yes, exactly. You’re hidden, sheltered, in a place to recharge, you’re protected. There’s also the connotation of a “fortress”; it’s a safe space, it’s also about belonging. And of course, that’s your place and no one else’s—except for a stray photographer, occasionally. (laughs) Every being has its own place, whether it’s a fish entering an old shell or a dog curling up in a kennel. From my point of view, I managed to synthesize this area: place / living / home. “Place” leads you to the physical construction side, “living” suggests shelter, and “home” seems to already be something aesthetic, comfortable.

D.M.: Compared to your other series where you looked at living or housing, here you’re no longer just an observer. You’re an actor. You place a double lens: what the dog sees on one hand, and what the camera lens sees on the other. It feels to me like at that moment, you practically replace the dog’s body—you identify with its perspective.

B.G.: Yes, because I’ve always felt like a loyal dog. I realized that everyone around me is playing a role, and mine is to be faithful to the very end, just like a dog that never snaps.

D.M.: This identification of yours with the subject intrigues me, because you’re no longer that observer-photographer—you’re almost a performer. I imagine the working process, where you get inside the dog kennel, and it already becomes a much broader project than what we strictly see in the photo. It’s something you activated physically, with your body—something latent.

B.G.: Yes, with the owners’ permission, I basically rented the dog’s house for a second. Just for a second, I lived there and enjoyed the dog’s home. I didn’t criticize it because, being a dog, I liked them all. (smiles) But I don’t have any making-of photos, because doing this whole searching route alone—with drills and gear on my back—I focused entirely on that one photo, and I couldn’t film myself. It was really hard to explain to the owners what I was doing—that I needed to remove the back of the kennel—and to convince them of my approach. I remember with the 10/1 project, too—there’s always this intense emotion when you enter a new home, when you take your shoes off and feel a little humble. Then you start to notice the smells. Then you observe the light, then the landscape visible through the window—or the dog’s porthole—and you’re so overwhelmed that every other concern disappears. And that’s when I feel best.

D.M.: Well, it's better that there's no making-of, we imagine the whole process ourselves. You don't always need to see everything. I know there's this incredible thirst to see it all, but not everything has to be translated into images—that’s where the artistic act comes in. Each of your projects has something emblematic, iconic. That’s a unique quality of the image, one that’s been increasingly lost due to its democratization. Very few people still seek this symbolic quality of the image. And its potential to become somehow universal.

B.G.: I know, I kept telling everyone: “Guys, you need to think of an image that doesn’t exist.” I know that sounds impossible. When I was explaining an unrealized project to a curator, she said: “I don’t believe it, that image doesn’t exist!” Exactly, it doesn’t—**I** create it; from today on, it exists.

D.M.: That’s exactly what I think is truly a conquest of photographic art—not the capture of existing views, but the capture of images that don’t exist.

B.G.: Exactly, yes, yes. A friend told me: “Bogdan, I swear, it’s really simple—you got into a doghouse, you took a picture, but a new line appeared in my brain. I never thought about anything like that in my life.” It’s like telling someone: “Look, you have a nose. You don’t see it because it’s so close to your eyes, but it’s there, and it’s beautiful, and it smells, and it does a lot of work.” That’s kind of how this guy felt when he saw the doghouses. So yes, I want images that don’t exist.

D.M.: But what did you learn beyond the image you created? What did you find out about the relationship with space, with architecture, about the size of a person in relation to all these things—about what it’s like to think small, not just big? Because this obsession with scale haunts us all—we all want to think big. What’s it like to think and place yourself in a space that actually makes you small?

B.G.: The feeling is overwhelming. Every time I entered a doghouse, I’d sit with the owner next to me—the person who built it—and it was very strange because everyone around us, neighbors, friends, would gather and laugh, while I was focusing on constructing the “smallness” I needed to get inside. And they’d laugh about how stupid the artists from Bucharest are. I came across a doghouse in Transylvania that was big and spacious—the owner told me he respects animals a lot, and even if the dog isn’t that big, the house is. Then I went somewhere in the Predeal–Brașov area where the owner had made a kind of enclosure, large and imposing. Of course, the architectures differ—people in the south don’t really care, they just nail together some old windows, with the mindset that “this’ll do,” while the others buy materials and use screws. The ones from the first category are very hard to repair after we take them apart. Everything from farther north was of higher quality—OSB boards, you could tell people had bought decent materials to build the doghouse. You know how I felt inside? Like in high school when I did speleology. I felt a bit scared because the first sensation is claustrophobia, and the strongest impression is the smell; then you start thinking about what you see—you’re happy if it’s something nice, and you get sad if it’s just a fence. When you enter the doghouse, it’s like trying on a medieval bracelet very carefully so you don’t break it. Now I’m making the prints in such a way that there’s space, so you’re not stressed, you can look calmly and know that you can be there anytime.

D.M.: It’s a redimensioning that allows you to breathe more freely, right?

B.G.: Yes, I overemphasized them.

D.M.: But speaking of what you see—you were saying that in some cases you enjoyed what you saw through the kennel opening, taking the dog’s perspective, while at other times you were disappointed. Tell me, how much does what we see out the window every day matter?

B.G.: It definitely matters. I don’t know to what extent it matters for dogs; the dog is a free animal, it’s outside all day and retreats at night. But even so, it seems grotesque to place the kennel against a wall or facing a fence—it feels a bit inhuman to me. Some are lucky, some are not.

D.M.: And for us, humans, how much does this matter? It’s said that everything we see from an early age builds our entire visual universe.

B.G.: I think it’s a complex cognitive issue, but since the brain is still insufficiently studied, everything is open to interpretation. Here, buildings and houses are constructed according to roads, and never has it been a priority what a person sees out the window. Only now are we starting to ask: but what do you see out your window? Do you enjoy what’s happening beyond your window? We feel lucky even if we see an industrial landscape—I mean, you tell your friends, look, a Berlin-style view—we enjoy the smokestacks still standing like mammoths that you can see from your window on the 10th floor in Dristor (editor’s note: a neighborhood in Bucharest).

D.M.: The outside represents the world.

B.G.: I asked dog owners why they placed the kennels like that: “Well, damn, I just put it like that.” I’m interested in majorities, not in the minority that sleeps with their dog in bed in the city—that’s why I traveled to small towns and villages.

D.M.: Let’s go back to the photos on display. Why did you turn the photograph into an object for exhibition? These oversized, monumental objects that also emit light—you turned them into lightboxes. Why?

B.G.: Because the first impression, when you enter such a small and claustrophobic space like a dog’s kennel, is the overwhelming sensation of light coming at you from the front—almost irritating, because it’s also very hard to photograph that setting. I had to shoot contre-jour, use technical tricks to balance the interior and exterior, and that’s why I want the light to come toward the viewer, to overwhelm them just like I felt inside that tiny kennel. I turned them into large and luxurious objects because, if I’ve been a faithful dog, I deserve a good bone to chew on. (laughs)

D.M.: So it’s basically a translation of the working experience.

B.G.: I gathered and accumulated all the energies and feelings I had and tried to create an object that’s close to the state I was in. I made them luminous because the light constantly blinded me and it was very hard to photograph them—and the result was such a pleasing image.

D.M.: There’s a nice contrast between the povera-style aesthetic of the kennel and the elegance of the object.

B.G.: Some people told me I should have made them out of broken wood, to match the image, but I wanted contrast. If I were photographing a gold jewel and wanted to highlight it, I’d put it in an old wooden box and make a poor lightbox. But when I see a poor dog kennel, I want to keep it like an icon, in a precious frame.

D.M.: The kennel becomes a cathedral.

B.G.: Exactly—it has to overwhelm you.

D.M.: I told you—it’s like a synthesis of humanity’s architectural achievements over time, especially with the symbolic shapes cut into the little house.

B.G.: Yes, you opened my mind with the circle, the oval, and the little house—they’re gorgeous like that.

D.M.: There you can also see this conquest of space by humans, who have always wanted to build and innovate. But we’re returning to simple formulas that have been around for centuries—to the symbols of dwelling and something timeless. We’re returning to basic forms.

B.G.: Yes, survival is minimal. You know, I look a lot at Japanese culture, and I read bits here and there, and everything boils down to very simple things: gardening, food, and fresh air. I transformed myself based on each dog’s little house.

D.M.: How does the project continue?

B.G.: Now I’m going to look more at birds, but I want to take a short break from Place / Dwelling / Home. Next, I want to focus on what is truly invisible—on underground waters. This is a new project about desertification in the south, about water scarcity. I’ll go in July, when nothing moves. Photography loves things that don’t move.

D.M.: I also like an image that teaches you how to breathe. It doesn’t hound you.

B.G.: I’m still looking for something I noticed last summer: that in July, shadows are under the objects—you don’t see any shadow. I’m going into wells searching for the shadow beneath the earth—that’s what I’ll do this summer.

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Bogdan Gîrbovan (b. 1981, Drobeta-Turnu Severin) graduated from the Bucharest University of Arts with the photo series 10/1, which became his most well-known work—ten interior landscapes capturing the distinct characteristics of the same built space, at different floors—a series that still has viral resonance online. His photography explores imagery that escapes the aesthetic oversaturation of contemporary visuals, analyzes categories through personal narratives, and investigates the transitional relationship between nature and humans. His projects, including Uniforms and Garments, RAPI, 5\@14, and Two Months Nowhere, have been exhibited in Bucharest, Lodz, Timișoara, Krakow, Paris, Madrid, Zurich, Prague, Venice, Istanbul, and Chicago. His photographs have been published in Punctum, NYArts Magazine, Fotografija, IDEA, Post Photography, and National Geographic. He is the author of two artist books: RAPI (2017), in collaboration with Michele Bressan, and Categories (published in collaboration with Galeria Posibilă in 2019).

Diana Marincu is a curator and art critic, currently artistic director of the Art Encounters Foundation in Timișoara, and a board member of IKT since 2025. Between 2012–2018, she collaborated with Plan B Foundation in Cluj and with Fabrica de Pensule. Between 2015 and 2017, she co-curated, alongside Anca Verona Mihuleț, the six-part curatorial project The White Dot and the Black Cube, held at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest. In 2017, together with Ami Barak, she curated the second edition of the Art Encounters Biennial, titled Life – A User’s Manual. For the Romania–France Season in 2018–2019, she curated two exhibitions in France, accompanied by catalogues, at MUCEM in Marseille and FRAC des Pays de la Loire. Through her work with the Art Encounters Foundation, Diana Marincu aims to explore links between neighboring artistic scenes in the region, build artistic connections based on cooperation/co-production, and support young generations of artists.

Photo* Sorin Florea

Strategic partners: Mobius Gallery & Art Encounters Foundation.