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ioana 📸

@e.wah.na

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photographer & writer
fragments of light, memory and longing
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O, Doină, de dor by Ioana Sandu My latest work provides an insight into my childhood, revisiting my childhood home in Romania, now old and decaying, but still inhabited by my grandparents. Photography allows me to confront what I have avoided, transforming unease into reflection. I work with intimate portraits, landscapes within the home, reflective writing and family archives, prioritising tenderness and connection while situating personal stories within wider social realities. In Romanian, dor is the ache that sits between love and absence. My grandfather wanted to protect us from it. He imagined a future where we would never be haunted by dor for too long. He built a house to hold us together for generations. That future was not ours to keep. We called it ‘The Big House’. The Big House is a labyrinth of concrete and memories, where my grandparents raised me while my mother worked abroad. Love lived there, but so did longing. One by one, necessity scattered us beyond its walls. We crossed countries and continents in search of a better life, carrying dor with us wherever we landed. What was meant to hold us together became a monument to the distance between us. In my absence, mould crept over the walls I used to draw on. Time carved itself into the hands that raised me. The garden swing I used to float on, now rusted and still, waits for a child that has long since grown. ‘Doina’ is a traditional song that embodies dor. It is also my grandmother’s name. The tragedy is that her name became her fate. She longs for her children, and for the laughter that once filled the Big House. And like echoes beyond its walls, we long for her I long for the smell of her coffee in the morning. I long for him scolding me for not eating enough. I long for a time when a phone call did not replace an embrace. These photographs are the doină of my family." @e.wah.na
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