Aurel Manea Photography

This is me. I weigh 80 kg, I’m 1.82 meters tall, 28 years old yet only alive for 4. I have birthmarks on my right hand and a scar on my face from when a dog bit me long time ago. For one year I have been wearing long unattended hair and before that short shaved. People who don’t really know me would label me as introverted depressed person with weird habits . Those who do  would say I am somehow bipolar, jumping from a state of complete and utter depression to one  over-extroverted. I usually don’t get out of my boring daily routine but when I do, I do it all the way. When something new comes along my path I take my chance with it. I am usually very open minded about anything and like to put people in situation where I challenge their predefined patterns of thinking about taboo subjects. I like to argue . I like drugs and never say no to them .They played a crucial part in my life with the new perspectives and viewpoints they brought. I like music. I like the girl I love, and I know in my heart that there is a high chance when she will be gone forever beyond hope I will die. I spend my nights thinking about that and about perspectives but find none. I like and do a lot of things, I make enough money and one without knowing would otherwise say I have nothing to complain about. They would be wrong.

I like to photograph, I carry all the time with me a medium backpack that contains my camera ,3 lenses, an external hard drive, a cleaning kit, a green laser pointer, a high precision scale, a portable microscope, an extra card and battery, condoms, a cable and a pen. The backpack is custom adapted so it fits my own needs , the padding removed and made so that it is thin and I have the fastest access to the camera without taking off the backpack. Estimated time-to-photo  : 4 seconds. If I see something I want to make sure I capture it. I do my best to facilitate travel, I have everything organized, I know how I’m going to carry all items in the plane and be as lite as possible.I spend a lot of time organizing everything in perfect order. There was a time when I was always in some place, on a volcano, around some glacial lake or in some European city with a camera . I enjoyed the strange and new feelings that each place made me live, the beauty of the new. And for that time it replaced the other feelings, the ones of desperation, it managed to fill the void .
I tough I was going to spend the rest of my life traveling and photographing. I loved each place, each new experience, each  breath of new air alike.

Not anymore.

- So. How was it ?
- Interesting I guess. A tad too long, the second part was so repetitive that I thought it will never end.
- Wasn’t that the whole point ?
-Yes, I know, but it just went on forever. And first I tough I was watching a soap opera and then it was combination of  Kaufman , Jarmush and a bit of Woody. Fresh approach yes, but maybe overdone.
-You know they say the director came drunk many times on the set. He would re-take the same scene hundred of times, exhaust the actors beyond recognition until they looked and behaved the way he wanted. Sometimes he didn’t even come to the set so the actors would film themselves by reflex. The last part was shot entirely without him.
-Experimental, eh ?
-Quite so. Were there a lot of people ?
-Not really. Most  were friends of the main actor and people he invited for free in the street. Many of them did not even know what they came for. Some were playing on their phones, others making out and some were just enjoying the image with headphones on. Very  few really watched .
-Why did you go  ?
-Well I heard it was supposed to be interesting and and  I was intrigued by the mixed reviews. That and the fact that the director chose to screen it only once and then burn the rolls.
-How did you feel about the main character and his “romance” ?
-Strange, like he no longer found a place in the world and sought  it in the only place he knew and made sense anymore, where it all began and all rest ended, in her.Like a broken record. And the more he struggled the deeper in his own situation got stuck. There was the bar scene where the friend said: “You know you give this image of such a melodramatic bullshitter that people can’t take you seriously. They can’t see the problems, they can’t see how deep they go and the nature of the damage” . The character and story  was much more complex than the poster and tag line said. Quite misleading indeed, that tag line .
-And her ?
-Well I can’t be sure if she was even real or not. The way she changed the look and expression, the way she faded from scene to scene. The script doesn’t let the viewer see the real person behind that very often. Even when we do see her, we don’t really. She herself acts different in the context, reacting towards him in seemingly unnatural ways. And the movie is made so we perceive her like he does. I think that’s the whole point. And I also think it may have all been a metaphor for a semi-purgatory.
-For both ?
-Like I said, she was very ambiguous so there was no way to tell. Perhaps. For him, yes. That or a very weird situation .
-What about the twist in the end ?
-I don’t know if it can be called a twist. May have been the only natural way to end the movie.
…………….
And a very unrelated photo. Or a photo with a very unrelated text.

Yup.

And a very adventurous trip also . Been climbing on the volcano, gone 4×4 offroad around it, gone into the ash covered lands, etc. But those in the stories to come.

Cheers.

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Ramanand in sfera alb-negru. Acelasi loc, aceeasi zi.

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