Florin Țepârdea, My Rear Window

FLORIN TEPARDEA, MY REAR WINDOW

It may be late at night. And yes I probably really should be thinking of going to bed soon. However all day long I've had a pressing need to share this beautiful black and white photograph series with you lovely people. So I'm throwing caution to the window and going on right ahead. I'm sure you won't mind if I do. Taken by Romanian IT specialist and photographer Florin Țepârdea, these stunning yet simple photographs comprise his first ever photography series, My Rear Window, and capture the various lives of students of the University of Bucharest. Florin began compiling the series one weekend after he started photographing the balcony view of his girlfriend's university dorm room. Noticing the beauty in the diversity of human life, that came and went across the balconies directly opposite from him, Florin decided to begin recording what he saw by taking photographic mementoes of the precious little moments he bared witness to.

 Those precious little moments when a person takes a brief departure from the whirlwind of life, in order to breathe and regain some kind of clarity once more. On a balcony like that, suspended above the ground below, above the constant never ending hum of life, noise, motion. Free from the confinements of architecture, the demands of life, the endless stream of thought. Feeling like you're on the edge of something, stranded in a place where no-one and nothing can quite touch you. A place where you can't go any further. Nowhere else to run, to turn, you have to admit defeat, and yet somehow it's such a relief. Having no choice but to stop and rest for a moment, suspended in that little bubble of space where time and the demands of life don't seem to have any importance at all. I love how Florin has captured all these different people enjoying those precious little moments. Those moments of freedom. It's such an intimate thing, seeing someone in that way. Seeing the kind of life that transpires when a person is confined within that setting of the balcony, with nowhere else to run. What do they do? Who do they share those moments with? What might they be thinking? How do those brief moments of freedom make them feel?

These photographs aren't anything ground breaking. They aren't presenting anything out of the ordinary. They're simplistic black and white photographs of student dorm rooms and the people living this transient, formative, special period of their lives within them. They won't take your breath away. But when you stop to look at them individually, and then as a series, and you start to consider the importance of the balcony setting, what it means, how it feels, to be stood there, and when you start to wonder about the people in the photographs and the lives their leading, what are we as viewers intruding on when we see these people during that very precise second of their life... That's when these photographs really come to life and their magic begins to sparkle. That beautiful innocence of human life, when everything else is stripped away and that vulnerable, special inner truth at the heart of everything is revealed.


-All photographs belong to Florin Țepârdea, and if you want to follow the 'My Rear Window' project further, just click here-