Nicolae Cosniceru

At the end of the 1990s and early 2000s, various attempts to give impetus to the photographic movement in Romania were sporadically or with some continuity over the course of a few years. The news of a photo festival at Vama Veche made me curious and eager to find out more, but I did not get to the first editions.

At some point it happened. I have arrived at VSLO and have discovered a handful of enthusiastic people who have gathered around them a group of other enthusiastic people willing to share their knowledge and experience and thus formed the core for a larger group of enthusiastic people eager to learn, experience and become part of what has become a community animated by an internal driving force that is the love for photography.

This community, grafted on the eternal young, rebellious and unprejudiced spirit of the farthest place in Romania, has generated special experiences that have always kept alive the desire for me to return the following year. It has become a multidisciplinary creation camp where you have events that happen with a sustained cadence that creates contradictory feelings. It’s hard to support and enjoy at the same time. It’s unparalleled. It’s hard to imagine something better. The calendar is done around the last week of August. You can not miss it. “After VSLO” meetings focused over several hours on the essence of a XtraLarge week in which you lived at maximum intensity. Everybody had something to tell and although you were there, you find out something new from each speaker. And most of them end up by saying: “I’m addicted to VSLO.”

For me VSLO is a journey in time. I feel like a student that has left home without the knowledge of his parents, a refugee in a place where no one finds me, and I have full freedom. I’m out of time, out of space, just doing nothing, free to give birth to my creation. And what call can be stronger for me than photography? A few editions in turn I was a conscientious participant in all the presentations, eager to find out new things from each of those who had something to share. I do this with great pleasure everytime I get the occasion.

But it was not just that. Catalin Rudolf & the team invited me to come up with something. Instead of the one invested with the responsibility of supporting a presentation, I tried to choose different themes, especially among those who were not interested by the mainstream. I have assumed my approach of themes not so much used in the daily life of a photography practitioner, and implicitly the risk of having a small number of participants and especially “sympathizers.” It seemed important to those who were curious and open, no matter how many they were, that their interest in the areas that they thought less was of. Despite the lack of “appealing”, the number of participants in these presentations exceeded, I admit, my expectations, and some of them confessed to me the joy of coming in contact with some information about a less explored field, and the joy of the experiment on this line. How satisfing were the first results, or how well appreciated, is absolutely imperative. How many people are watching, so many evaluations there are. It is important that everyone believes in what he is doing and finds a way to do that. The road is not easy and most likely, the results will not be immediately visible. It is important to want and find yourself on this road.

There have been and are other events, festivals that revolve around photography. In a country with a vertiginous increase in the number of passionate photographers is something absolutely normal and necessary. Which is better, bigger, louder? Absolutely unimportant. Each has its own particularity, and each has a place. The place of the VSLO Festival can not be taken by anyone. VSLO has entered into our hearts and we keep it well, there’s no way to go. Whoever was in Vama, wherever he would go, and for any time any temptation would follow, there is no way to forget the spirit of this place. The spirit is with him. Whoever came to VSLO will do the same thing. VSLO is a constant and active presence in the action of promoting and promoting visual arts, and has confirmed its prestige every year. The Spirit of the Festival can not be told, it must be lived. Those who were there know what it is all about. I invite you to experiment. This festival deserves to grow even more, and if with Catalin Rudolf & our team we gather more and more, and some will give a helping hand, the chance to happen this will be bigger. Thank you!