Photography: Bogdan Stoica
Each year, the Concordia Department of Studio Arts’ photography program awards the Roloff Beny Foundation Fellowship in Photography to a graduate student for his or her outstanding artistic and academic achievement.
In 2014, MFA student Bogdan Stoica, BFA 10, won the $10,000 fellowship. Stoica used the funds to travel to his native Romania for two months in summer 2015 to work on a film project, trying to capture life in the countryside. “Part of the Romanian identity is travelling through the landscape, seeing sheep and mountains,” says Stoica, who earned his BFA in film production.
Still life
“I started creating a part-fiction, part-documentary movie,” Stoica says. However, he changed his strategy while on location. “I really like documentary and fiction, but doing fiction means you have to have a plan, and it stops you from seeing what’s around you. I like to have my eyes open. I stopped thinking about the project, looked around and interacted with the landscape, and took it from there.”
Stoica is now in the midst of completing the film, called Catherine et ce qu’il reste à traduire de cet été qui a assoupi la terre. Once done, he plans to continue working in video and cinema and further pursue his studies.
As his artist’s statement says: “My artistic approach builds on a deep-rooted desire to understand and explore the intimate and emotional facets of our existence. Through the mediums of photography, film and sculpture, I aim within my work to both mirror and conceptualize the intrinsic links between memory and identity.”
Teenager from Islaz (01)
Teenager from Islaz (02)
Costel