CÉSAR PASTOR
“NO MAN’S LAND”
In the almost 30 years since the end of the communist dictatorship, Romania has grown from 23 million to just 19.7 million inhabitants. A drop of 14%, mainly caused by economic migration. This social phenomenon is visibly aggravated in rural areas, where the ageing of the population is intensified by the exodus of young people in search of new job opportunities, far from the isolation and harshness of the rural world.
Faced with this depopulation, the old generation that remains, the last heirs and protectors of centuries-old traditions, lives in harmony with the land that saw them born. Those small towns and villages that once were places of fire and long nights, now survive neglected by the government, aware that the world they know will disappear when they are gone.
I started this project at the end of 2016, which began as a fascination for the visual atmosphere of a country that was foreign to me, I derive from the need to create a profound and intimate portrait of a forgotten society that is witnessing, with dignity and in silence, its disappearance.
