AIABaltimore Gallery Exhibit Committee: November 2006

The exhibit, Hostile Terrain: Reflections on Romania’s Industrial Landscape, an exhibit by photographer Paul Burke, runs from November 1 to December 22 at the AIABaltimore Gallery. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, November 2 from 5-7p.m.

In the nearly half-century between the close of the Second World War and the bloody overthrow of its dictator, Nicolai Ceaucescu, Romania underwent a massive and unprecedented industrialization. Like their Soviet (and Soviet Bloc) counterparts, Romania’s communist leadership hoped to shed their country’s agrarian past, re-casting it as a model state of authoritarian rule. To do so, they commissioned the building of countless new factories and industrial complexes, oversaw a never-ending succession of mammoth public works projects and triggered sweeping demographic shifts by relocating peasants from the countryside to the newly industrialized urban centers. Meanwhile Romania’s cities, led by the capital Bucharest, were entirely transformed. Huge areas – often the oldest neighborhoods – were razed to make way for the grandiose urban planning projects that were a hallmark of Ceaucescu’s rule. The Brutalist style favored by the communists predominated, as row after row of apartment blocs came to dominate the skyline. Everywhere, one could see the physical evidence of the communist’s social engineering campaign.

These photographs, taken during 1999 and 2000, attempt to reveal how the transformation of Romania’s social and political structure is reflected in the physical structures that make up its landscape. This new industrial landscape is one of the grim legacies of a half-century of communist rule. Its landmarks – cooling towers, high-tension lines, billowing smoke, razor wire – have become ubiquitous to the point of invisibility. Today, the factories that were built as symbols of national strength operate at a fraction of their capacity, if at all. Their crumbling edifices and rusting machinery have become symbols of another kind: an apt metaphor for neglect and decay. There is a haunting quality to these places now; their scale and solitude call to mind battlefields or ancient ruins. Long-dormant construction sites are littered throughout Bucharest like huge archeological excavations. They, too, seem frozen in time, unlikely monuments to their creators. In all, Romania’s industrial landscape evokes a powerful, if elusive, response: a silent witness to the ongoing narrative of human endeavor – and folly.