Archive photos inspire a book about old Chisinau
Archive photographs of Chișinău inspired 16 writers from Romania and the Republic of Moldova to publish an impressive work. The volume "Interwar Chișinău under a photographic pretext" combines rare images with valuable writings and was launched in Iași.
The project began with a few archive photographs. Due to the scarcity of works on the capital from that era, the authors decided to create a volume combining photos with accompanying texts.
"Today, we are presenting to Iași an interwar Chișinău. This remarkable volume brings together, in a palimpsestic manner, the voices of 16 exceptional authors from both banks of the Prut. They were inspired by an interwar photographic archive that we graciously made available to them, using these images as a foundation to craft their own narratives," explains Diana Vrabie, the volume's coordinator.
This work features 16 authors from Romania and the Republic of Moldova who have transformed these images into a basis for storytelling and analysis.
“Very little has been written about this period in Chișinău. During the Soviet era, discussing interwar Chișinău and its cultural life was prohibited. I am pleased to see that more books on interwar Chișinău have been published recently,” says writer Nicolae Spătaru.
“Essentially, we are engaging in a form of literary recovery of interwar Chișinău—an aspect that is regrettably underrepresented in Romanian literature. One of our goals was for this ‘collective character’ of Chișinău to become a literary personality in Romanian prose,” explains writer Emilian Galaicu-Păun.
The volume titled "Interwar Chisinau with a photographic pretext" was launched by the Heritage 21 Foundation in Chisinau. This event was held in collaboration with the French Institute in Romania, the National Museum of Romanian Literature in Iași, and the Writers' Union of the Republic of Moldova.
Author: Daniela Nemerenco
