Interview with Silviu Gheție

 

When did you start taking pictures?

 

I have been doing it for a very long time. I was about 20 years old, I started in ‘87. But the beginning was much more difficult because you didn't have access to materials, to information. I was self-taught, I worked in cellarss and I was taught how to enlarge by a guy who didn’ t really know how to do it either. But it was very exciting that I could express myself through photography. Me who was very confused and technical - I couldn't have painted, for example, I wouldn't have had the patience. You know that moment when you're in the present for a second or two and you snap the picture? That's how much I resisted staying in the present. One second - two. I was very agitated. I was looking in the mirror and I saw the face of a bunny. I couldn't take myself seriously.

 

How did you go from miner to photographer?

 

I was a student of mining sub-engineers and I worked half-time in the mine as a miner's helper, cleaning, supplying... And in the afternoons I went to classes. I was employed half-time, so I only worked 2 weeks a month. And one evening I was late for classes, I was walking in the halls of the faculty and I see an open door - I had already started taking pictures; I thought I was pretty good. It was after the revolution. And I saw an open door where a toilet was supposed to be, but it was disused and usually the door was always closed. The door is open, I see a photo lab, an old man. I say:

Hello! 

Hello! 

Is this a photo lab? I take pictures too. 

Yes, look, I'm retiring now. 

And who comes in your place? 

I do not know.

And how should I try? 

Well, ask the staff. 

 

 

I was completely innocent and had no idea how these things worked. I went to those ladies, as he told me. I asked around and entered the competition alone and ended up the university photographer. That's how I first became a photographer. In the meantime, I was collaborating with the first newspaper in Baia Mare and with all that I was super bored. I had too much time. I would arrive at 10 and leave at 12 because I was bored - that's a job where you had to stay. And I stayed there until I got a job at the second newspaper. That's how I became a photographer.

 

What is the story of the picture of the man with the newspaper?

 

He was the head of the communist party. The communist party was re-established for a short time after the revolution and his name was Ion Tution. He came to the newsroom - I don't know much about him. After he talked to the others, I called him there in a room, let me take your picture. He was a character, I saw him, with that crutch... And I made two pictures of Ion Tution like this, zac - zac. I have another one like that, Olteanu, quite a strange character from that period. He appears in the picture with the trombone and the rally behind. 

I photographed him because he was the head of the Romanian Communist Party in Baia Mare after the revolution and his name was Ion Tution. And he had a crutch like a saint.

 

(editor’s note) The interview begins as an interview, but continues as a series of memories, as a discussion between two friends. Here you are looking at memory fragments; just as the memories do not respect a structural rigor, so this exhibition does not respect a rigor of exhibitions either. It is like a continuous flow produced by the hippocampus, neocortex and amygdala, rendered to you in a series of images and words.