The OU Center for Studies in Democracy and Culture
Long ago in a far away place...

Like the photos in the Pictorial Photography in America 1922 collection, these images are from a distant era, but also from a distant place. Romania is a country less visited by Americans and Romania’s small presence in our literature and pop-culture leaves the country far from our consciousness. This absence of a mental imagery makes the scenes in these photos all the more exotic and fascinating.

The photos on this page are copies of postcards made, presumably, from the original photographs. The quality is undoubtedly degraded through the copying and the reduction in size from the originals, as well as the process of copying the photos yet another time in my office (though my copies are actually quite true to the postcards from which they were made). Nevertheless, they inspire our imagination as we look at them and try to picture the people and places where they were made.

Also like the Pictorial Photography in America 1922 collection they have remarkable composition. The photos almost certainly were made with a large format camera on a tripod. This would have required careful preparation and intentional planning. These are not snapshots.

As documentary photography, these are wonderfully successful. We have no way of knowing what was the objective of the photographer, or the organization that sponsored the photos, but the absence of this knowledge simply adds to the mystery for us of the world in which they were taken.



Prof. Rodger Randle

The use of lighting in a photo is a key element. I suspect the photographer was lucky with the lighting in this photo rather then intentional. As Ansel Adams aid of his photos: “Sometimes I arrive just when God's ready to have somone click the shutter.”
Observations go here about the photo pictured in this location.
Observations go here about the photo pictured in this location.
Observations go here about the photo pictured in this location.
Observations go here about the photo pictured in this location.
Observations go here about the photo pictured in this location.
Observations go here about the photo pictured in this location.
Observations go here about the photo pictured in this location.
Observations go here about the photo pictured in this location.
Observations go here about the photo pictured in this location.
Observations go here about the photo pictured in this location.
JERRY D. DREW, Secretary. National Arts Club, 119 East 19th Street, New York City.”

OU Center for Studies in Democracy and Culture

Prof. Rodger A. Randle, Director
The University of Oklahoma Tulsa
4502 East 41st Street, Tulsa, Oklahoma 74135
E-mail: randle@ou.edu

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