There are so many images from the Bucharest International Air Show 2012 which took place last week-end at the Băneasa airport and they are everywhere, that I think everybody is probably bored by now, so my post will be short, concise and NOT focused on colored fog trails.
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A preview of my pictures for the Triptych photo exhibition to be opened in a few weeks. Called Fishmongers is a series of street photos from my Indian trip.
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In the last few days I worked preparing the technical side of a group photo exhibition, called Triptych, where 21 photographers and a painter will expose their creation made from 3 images. The opening is Monday 6 August 2012 19:00 at the Serendipity tea house in Bucharest.
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This year the heat is strong and long lasting, all the vegetation has a heavy fight for survival, so it probably was the last opportunity of the year to capture some sunflower pictures.
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We struggle at near 40°C, the politics around us are in turmoil, still people want a normal life, they try to ignore the problems and go forward. Last Saturday a bunch of kids organized an event (the second year in a row) called “Free Hugs – Summer Love” where they offered hugs around the Herastrau Park in Bucharest.
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Even there are numerous other buildings in the Brâncovenesc style, the Mogoșoaia palace is the biggest and the most known, is the emblem of this style.
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In the abandoned mansion the rooms were empty still, we found somewhere a mirror. Just what we needed before taking pictures.
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The Drugănescu mansion is a monument emblematic for the Brâncovenesc style, but now is empty and abandoned. So an incursion there was not very easy (but not very difficult either).
The building reminded me by a haunted house from classic horror movies and the inscription on some inside door “section chef” made my imagination jump to abandoned psychiatric facilities (I have no idea what it was used for under the communist regime).
But beside the spectacular columns in the cellar, it had an even more spectacular loft, just good for a mini photo-session.
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The coup d’etat in Bucharest evolved to the point the German chancellor, called it unacceptable: the rogue government went beyond the law and suspended a democratically elected president. The street protest continued, but they also chanced, the peaceful protests in Piața Victoriei were took over by a small political party in its hunger for audience, with activists, flags, T-shirts, noise, megaphones and everything. Since that party has its own propaganda machine and I wasn’t there to endorse a party, my coverage will pause. I will probably cover other major events in the meantime, like the big presidential support demonstration and will certainly go and vote in the referendum.
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Until this week I believe I never did politics on this blog, so is natural for the reader to wonder why I become active in this area so suddenly, do I plan a new career or received some incentives? That’s not the case.
I believe in freedom and freedom of speech, I want to live in a modern and democratic society. And for those to happen, there is the need for a free press, which is lacking in my country:
In such conditions, if one want the truth to be heard, it has to bypass the traditional media and put the reality directly on the internet, where those powers can’t reach it and alter the truth. Traditional media is bought and full of lies, always hired to follow someone’s agenda. We are free.
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Later today the communist coalition controlling the government and the parliament will move to impeach the democratically elected president, Traian Basescu. He will be suspended from his function until a national referendum.
I think this particular impeachment is a bad thing for a number of reasons, I think he was the best post-revolutionary president, but this does not means much, since the others were absolutely awful, he did a lot of mistakes and bad things, but at least under his mandate also happened positive things like the country had at least an independence of powers in the state (legislative, executive, justice), the press was free (unlike the previous regime) and we had, for the first time in history a formal condemnation of the former communist dictatorship (while that is not much, is infinitely more than the previous regimes).
So I am not a fan of the president, but I think for the moment he is the best alternative. This slogan from yesterday’s meeting at Piața Revoluției are very close to my own position “I don’t cry for Basescu, I cry for the rule of law and constitutional order”.
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If in the previous days the pro-democratic and anti-governmental demonstrations at Piața Victoriei were spontaneous and unofficial, yesterday evening Piața Revoluției of Bucharest (the symbolic place where the old communist dictatorship ended) hosted a big official demonstration with thousands of participants. This time it was a political action, with parties, associations, organizations and personalities participating and announcing an alliance intended to stop the coup d’etat and defending democracy. They will lack much power in the following months, but are expected to be a force in the upcoming elections expected this autumn.
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The Romanian parliamentary coup d’etat is continuing in full force, now it moved to the removal of the democratically elected President of the state – that is in theory a constitutional move, but not in the way it is happening now, with a governmental (not even a law!) restricting the Constitutional Court ability to pronounce over the impeachment and a following law (or maybe even a governmental order again) to modify the referendum law (since a referendum should follow). On top of that, the Senate president was replaced a day before, since him will be the acting president while the elected president is suspended.
Therefore, the civil society reacted again. I am not good with estimated a crowd size, but my guess is the protesters in Piata Victoriei yesterday evening were double in number compared with the previous day. And their message wittier, I especially liked “The Higgs boson was discovered. Politicians, why you don’t let us live?”. Proportionally, the number of photos in my post increased (and there are even more in an online album).
This evening a really big protest is expected from 18:00 in Piata Revolutiei, the place where the anti-communist revolution started in December 1989. I will be there.
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Life was going “normal” I was busy preparing the Wikipedia photography contest, editing photos for an exhibition with my photo group, queuing posts for this blog, planning trips for the summer and so on, when the crude reality hit: a communist government in place in Romania which got into power after some parliamentary play that modified the majority, moved into what can be called a “parliamentary coup d’etat”, which demolished democratic institutions like People’s Advocate or the Parliament leadership and free media like the public television and is targeting now other institutions like the Constitutional Court and the (democratically elected) President, with Justice to follow. The life can’t go on, I have to stop and document how people are trying to protect democracy and freedom, they get out in the streets protesting.
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Femininity is when women are treated like delicate, beautiful creatures. Feminism is when some of them ask to be equal to men.
Still, in the gypsy horseshoe maker community, it seems to be different, the stronger to the heavier work.
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