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tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

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tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

Photos © 2004 Cosmin Bumbuţ (www.bumbutz.com) Words © 2004 Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş All rights reserved to the authors.

Editor : Răzvan Penescu rpenescu@liternet.ro Editor for the .pdf Acrobat Reader : Iulia Cojocariu © 2004 LiterNet Publishing House for .pdf Acrobat Reader version This book can be freely downloaded for personal use, in this layout version, from the LiterNet website. The free distribution of this book by other site, the alteration or the commercialization of this version without the written agreement of LiterNet Publishing House are prohibited and will be punished in agreement with the stipulations of the copyright laws.

ISBN : 973-8475-76-7 LiterNet Publishing House http://editura.liternet.ro office@liternet.ro

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tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

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All I remember from that evening are the red light bulb hanging from the bathroom’s ceiling, the smell of Dektol, Led Zeppelin oozing from the tape recorder and the glossy white paper floating in the developer tray. As I was gently pressing it with my hand I started to make out a shadow, then two, I started to see people and places, people I knew, whom I had photographed during my summer holiday.

There are people and places, mostly places, which have a suppressed beauty which we can’t see as we’re always on a rush or we’re in some sort of lethargy. Until this overly sensitive guy comes and points at them. He pokes them with his finger.

Hard. Or he discreetly raises an eyebrow. And you keep on staring at how beautifully has God set things up. And how simple they are.

tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

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The land is broken up alike the human mind. That is, tilted every so often.

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tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

There was a time when people believed that the world was sitting on the back of a humungous whale, which, a long time ago, had swallowed three hundred fishermen boats, whirling water streaming through a myriad of teeth. The men wanted to punish the whale. They caught it and they poured earth on it. Then they ploughed it, they built houses on it where they lived their life, they had children and their children had children at their turn. All of them hoping that one day the whale will spit out the fishermen, safe and sound, with their boats and everything.

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tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

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Most of the times, the things I see materialize in my mind in a good old cubist manner (as I probably strive to perceive the time dimension, too, the image comes into sight from several angles simultaneously, broken down into a set of pieces with no apparent logical order). When I try to do the same thing in reverse, that is, to attach some logic to each of the fragments, the final image has always blurry, liquefied edges. Yet I can’t say I dislike it.

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tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

I was six. I remember this old man, his name was Pistolescu. He was holding me on his lap and was talking with my father. Mr. Pistolescu used to be wealthy. Now he was selling apples and home-made brandy.

‘See that forest-covered mountain?’ he was telling my father. ‘Used to be mine.’ I try to remember how that mountain looked like. All I can recall is the old man’s mug. The harder I try to recollect, the more I realize that the mountain looked just like Mr. Pistolescu’s head.

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tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

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I think people are born with this idea in their head – either genetic luggage or collective subconscious, neither knowing where it came from, nor trying to figure out why it’s there. The idea that the earth is a woman. A fertile woman. Big ass, big tits.

Once I took the 105 bus from the railway station. In the bus two unschooled women were talking about how it is to be pregnant. Between giggles, one of them told a story of how once when she was pregnant she craved for… earth. I glanced at her furtively. From behind she looked exactly like the ancient Cucuteni statue of the woman with the oversized hips.

tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

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One day, when the birds realized that they didn’t have a king they all got together and one of them offered to guide them in their quest. When you’ll get to the end of your road you may find out that the one you’re looking for is not how you expected him to be but you’ll have to go all the way.

It’s late summer, almost autumn, and I’m reading Mantiq-u-ttuyoor (Conference of the Birds). The translation is so and so. I look through the open window to rest my eyes. A huge flock crosses the horizon then disappears in chaotic loops. Creepy.

tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

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The story goes something like this: The world was perched on four pillars over the water – The Pillars of the Earth – but a fish ate away one of them. As the Earth was very, very heavy, the tops of the other three pillars sunk into it and pushed its crust up, thus the hills, valleys and mountains. Others say that where the eaten pillar used to be a piece of the Earth fell off and an endless sea took its place.

I look down through the plane window. I see a hill like a Saxon twist bread and the floor seems thinner than cigarette paper.

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tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

Roads. I always thought they are the most refined form of Earth Art. They are like punctuation marks bringing the space together.

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tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

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God didn’t make the Earth as it is today. The Earth used to be translucent, glass-like. You could see what was concealed in it. No matter how much did Cain try to hide Abel’s corpse his effort was in vain. No matter how deep he tried to bury his brother there was no way he could put him out of sight. Horrified, the Earth grew dark. And stayed that way.

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tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

Then people found out that the Earth is alive.

When they started to plough they saw the blood gushing. The people from Bucovina say that God asked them ‘Why don’t you plough anymore, good people?’ ‘How could we plough My Lord when the plough is drenched in blood?’ ‘Go and plough now.’

And when they started to plough they saw no more blood. God made it white.

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tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

Once I was thinking (for no apparent reason) how would it be to go away and live in the mountains, grow a beard, raise a goat and become a near genius. I burst out laughing. I realized then that some people have the calling of the earth and others don’t. As simple as that.

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tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

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I had no Grandparents-in-the-Countryside. I spent my childhood in Bucharest blowing paper cones through plastic tubes. My rural imagery is a collage of sequences caught with the corner of my eye from a speeding car or from a book.

tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

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There are people out there with a huge visual culture. People who may learn immensly by the mere pleasure of “seeing” and the wisdom of knowing how to do it.

Similarly, there are “essential” photographers. I said it before : with them the image is more of a struggle with light than with surfaces. Even if things don’t appear to be that way.

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tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

In my humble opinion, you cannot but be mystic when you live in the countryside. Once you have seen how the air, that air, is painted on the icon makers’ thin gold.

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tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

In the 60’s or 70’s, fed up with consumerism (or maybe out of a colossal boredom) a handful of people came up with a visual art style called Earth Art. Seashores wrapped in cling film, ditches in the desert, weirs, mud balls and heaps of grains. All in a frenzy of dominating monumental spaces. Or a futile search for one’s roots.

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tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

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Everything is there, just the way you wanted. The image restores in the quadrangle of the pentaprism, cut out in the dark. You are but one eye dissolved though the glass square. You wind. Nice and easy – all the way. The diaphragm ring. You focus. Your forefinger is tense on the shutter. You relax now. A little to the left. You hold your breath. Your universe is now 35 millimetres wide. Everything is perfect. You shoot. You breathe out.

tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

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1.618. The golden section, the golden triangle, the golden number, the Fibonacci sequence, the mean and extreme ratio problem. There is a beauty that can be rendered mathematically and no other way.

A chemical reaction in the human body or God knows what. Thoughts barge into my mind when I see something I like very much, they don’t come in a logical sequence. I see an exhibition or a good movie and I can hardly utter an ‘It was cool!’ that I’m ashamed of. I have no power to refine a sensation into words.

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tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

I riffle through a French brochure on “La forêt de Fontainebleau” and the Barbizon School. I skip over the pages on Rousseau and Millet and I find what I was looking for: “Les petits

maîtres” (Parmi les étrangers: les Roumains Andreescu et Grigorescu, les Américains Babcock et Hunt). I make a sign and keep on skimming through. A few photographs of a poor excuse for a forest, the Barbizon city hall and that’s all. My only consolation is that the Americans are also listed under “minor masters” and the thought that the major ones, the Frenchmen, died without having the luck to paint a really beautiful forest.

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tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

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I remember that as I was a studious little boy my mom was buying me beautiful books (not an easy find back then). One of them had Ukrainian fairy tales (the Soviets used to make gorgeous children books) and in that book I saw the most superbly drawn birch trees. Now I can’t tell whether they were indeed that beautiful or I simply thought so because from behind them I was expecting the Midnight Rider.

tilted land Photos by Cosmin Bumbuţ Words by Tudor Mavrodin Translation by Corin Toporaş LiterNet Publishing House 2004

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It’s been 15 minutes I have been looking at some photographs by Cosmin Bumbuţ. Distorted perspectives, flat depths, fences, trees and fields melt into images that defy the laws of optics. It feels like some of the photographs are taken directly on the cerebral cortex, where the visual perceptions are defined and remains of random pictures generate the dreams. Photographs of tilted lands.