Fourteen female prisoners at Tirgsor Prison in Romania participated in a six-camera workshop led by Cosmin Bumbuţ.
The workshop was suggested by a Miss Raducanu (presumably the warden), and Cosmin Bumbuţ took up the initiative. Bumbuţ gained sponsorship from f64 and insisted that – after basic training – the women be left unsupervised with the cameras for the duration of the project.
Bumbut: “I received six Canon PowerShot cameras that I took with me to Tirgsor in July. The cameras worried me, they had so many buttons and the manual was so complex that I was skeptical that anyone could use them; I, for one, wasn’t able to. I felt very nervous.”
Over a two month period the group captured 14,000 images. 395 were chosen for the final exhibition and 95 can be seen in an online gallery at Punctum (Romanian language). Here is a Google translation.
I’ve picked out 12 images.
This is a marvelous project. I would like to see more photography used as rehabilitation in prisons. I have a colleague who uses video in an ethnological framework and the men really benefit from the novel educational approach.
This Romanian project is similar to the pinhole photography of the girls of Remann Hall here in Washington State.
Finally, it is worth saying that Bumbut was inspired by Klavdij Sluban‘s prison workshops which he has conducted across the globe.
6 comments
Comments feed for this article
August 17, 2011 at 12:28 am
Mexico’s Drug War, Feminised: Portraits by Katie Orlinsky « Prison Photography
[…] Prison Rodeo – Former Prisoner, Diana Ortiz, Inspires Confidence and Healing in Female Inmates – Photography Workshop for Romanian Women Prisoners Produces 14,000 Images – Women’s Prisons in Afghanistan – Women Behind Bars: Jane Evelyn Atwood’s ‘Too Much Time’ […]
June 7, 2012 at 2:17 pm
In a Romanian Womens Prison, Ioana Cirlig Asks, “What Do You Miss?” « Prison Photography
[…] When I learnt of Ioana Cirlig‘s work in Romania, the name Târgşor Prison rang a bell. Indeed, Târgşor (alternative spelling, Tirgsor) was the site of photographer Cosmin Bumbuţ’s six camera workshop I wrote about two years ago. […]
December 4, 2013 at 7:07 am
Cosmin Bumbuț | Prison Photography
[…] if I’d look over his new book Bumbata. I was aware of Cosmin and his work because of the photography workshop he initiated in Targsor women’s penitentiary in Romania in 2009. However, I was not aware of his long term project documenting life inside a […]
March 8, 2014 at 2:35 am
A Prison, Photographed By Prisoners: ‘Inside View’ Takes Us Within Guernsey’s Only Prison | Prison Photography
[…] programs in Columbia, Romania and Switzerland prove the model exists. In U.S. juvenile facilities photo education has operated in […]
May 18, 2015 at 1:45 pm
Female Prisoners Asked To Share The Thoughts They Have When They Lie Alone At Night | Prison Photography
[…] Targsor has been photographed before – in a photo workshop format by Cosmin Bumbut and by photographer Ioana Carlig. Were you aware of these […]
February 24, 2016 at 5:18 pm
Sex Cells: Inside Romanian Prisons’ Conjugal Visit Rooms | Prison Photography
[…] wasn’t a project that came out of the blue. Back in 2009, he facilitated a photo workshop for women prisoners in Târgșor Penitentiary (more about that here). Soon after that he embarked on a multiyear […]