Silviu Pavel (Romania)

Rio 2009

www.silviupavel.com

What is your photographic approach ?

I believe that a good photograph is just an extension of the photographer’s cultural level. Without a strong background in literature, music, film, painting or any other art domain it is very difficult to create something that will resist in time. The emotion is the same regardless of the artist’s method for transmitting it to the public. And the emotions are traveling much faster than a rational mind and that is why I think that an image must be felt first and not understood. No school can teach you how to feel, but you can teach yourself how to be open and prepared to receive emotions and this can be achieved only through art.

In photography I like pictures that are not so spectaculars. I like images that intrigue you by their neutrality and you are not able to describe a certain emotion because you feel a mix of emotions and the balance between positive and negative is so very fragile. I think that the pictures that intrigue are the ones that can resist much longer on a wall. Nowadays is common to look and appreciate only extreme and very easy consuming visual compositions because we do not have time to search deeper and we are satisfied only if we think that we understand what it was all about. I think that is what was lost from the early days of photography… the viewer’s time for looking on a picture and his liberty of feeling.

Till now I met a lot of people in my photographic trips and I learned that for every great moment captured I had to let myself entering their world without any resistance and to fell in love with their way of life and stories. This was always the hard part for me as a photographer ; every time giving up all my selfish motivation and constraints and letting me be filled with just pure emotions.