Persona (Absent People)

Art project by Teodor Graur: an artist shows pictures made by amateurs - he just selected and enlarged the photographs which unexpected reveal "an absence", instead.

"I started working photography in the early eighties. My favorite subject was people. I also collected found pictures. Everybody was anonymous people.
Today I continue to randomly colect fond photos. I wished to exhibit pictures taken by amateurs, by those who act according to "cliches". People take photos of themselves in hope they will be remembered in the memories of the other (and theirs too). Now I know this is rather useless: these people ARE NOT PRESENT, neither "here", nor "there". They are "unknown people" or "names without people", that is NOBODY.
I'm not the author of the exhibited photographs, but I could have been.
"Persona" is the almost perfect photo still of "US" that I would have taken."
(T.G.)