London
based artist Cristian Stefanescu was born in 1968 in Bucharest. He
obtained an MSc degree in 1992 at the Technical University of
Construction Bucharest, specialisation in Water and Wastewater Treatment
followed by the second MSc in 1994 obtained at University of Liège,
specialisation in Groundwater Engineering.
After
having spent more than a decade of his life teaching at the Technical
University of Construction Bucharest, Cristian moved from academia to
photography working in fashion industry.
Photography
was born black and white and he chose to continue this tradition, while
working on evolving the visual aesthetics of this raw art form.
The
passion for photography developed in the early years of college and
became a constant element of his life. After long and constant
collaborations with fashion brands in Romania, in 2018 Stefanescu moved
to London to open his studio.
Cristian’s
distinctive monochrome photographs are an exploration into the
psychological and metaphysical. He captures nature or city in specific
moments in time – through highly visual heartbreakingly dark images
often overlapped with low-contrast minimal landscapes – to create works
that stretch the idea of a hypothetical time.
Stefanescu
believes in the energy of every being, of each object or nature
element. He believes that photography renders the ineffable combination
of the object’s energy and the photographer's one while taking a
picture.
“And
what is the energy of a photograph? Is it the energy of the space that
is framed in the viewfinder, is it the energy of the photographer? I
think it is an ineffable combination of the photographer's energy when
he pressed the shutter button and everything that forms the energy of
the photographed space, the sun and the earth, the land and the sky, the
clouds and the air, the animals and plants, the wind and rain.”
He
focuses his camera on a distorted reflection of a hypothetical reality,
since what one perceives to be real is a mere reflection of his own
reality, and he is looking for the feeling that makes him click the
shutter button.
An
award-winning artist, Cristian’s work can be found in private
collections around the world including United Kingdom, United Stated,
Ireland, Romania and Israel.
