Behind the Scenes: Magic Bird

Not everything in Romania has improved since the end of the dictatorship, but a love of life is gradually re-emerging among the country’s people. Gott travelled twice to Romania for the series, which resulted in colourful images full of humour and confidence.

“A photographer friend from Vienna, Alex Magedler, was travelling by car through Romania and I wanted to join him. I flew to Bucharest to meet him there. We left the capital together heading for the Black Sea coast, to Vama Veche close to the border with Bulgaria. During the Ceausescu era, Vama Veche was a resort and holiday home for intellectuals, the free-thinking Romanian elite, who, for some unknown reason, were tolerated there. Nowadays, Vama Veche is a sort of Romanian Ibiza, with tents and parties on the beach.

Unfortunately, we got there at the end of the holiday season and, to a large degree, the show was over. So we explored inland, following adventurous roads that landed us in small villages like Virtop and Pecineaga. In the rural regions in particular, people react to foreigners with a great degree of hospitality and curiosity. It wasn’t always easy to find much life on the streets, but as soon as you encountered someone and explained yourself with hand and feet gestures, the ice was broken.

I planned the second trip with a photographer friend from Zurich – Alex Wydler. We had met three years earlier in Uzbekistan during a workshop with Magnum photographer Nikos Economopoulos. In the end there were four of us travelling in two cars. Our first stopover was in Maramures, a pretty ethnic, rural farming district in the north of Romania by the border to the Ukraine. We had rented a room in a farmhouse in a tiny village there. Every day we would set out from there to investigate the surroundings. These journeys were among the most beautiful and intense ones I’ve ever taken. I got to know and love Romania.”