Tagged: poverty

hip flask

rubi_parents

Bucharest 2003-2004. A group of teenagers share their lives around the Brancoveanu subway station and the adjacent park. Many of them are orphans, unlike 16 years-old Rubi. Even if they are very fond of her, Rubi’s unemployed parents cannot afford to keep her at home. When the kids are not running errands for local shopkeepers, or begging, they kill time getting high on paint fumes. Their drug of choice, their ticket to a brief escape from hunger and an unforgiving world is Aurolac, a silver paint used in Romanian churches for the halos of the saints.

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papusha

Papusha (Doll) lived in the tunnels under Brancoveanu Park in Bucharest with a group of homeless teenagers. She was 17 and mentally challenged. The group offered her protection but the boys would also use her for sex.

In a village near Pitesti, a gypsy bride waits for her groom. The decoration of the walls is typical for the region. The artist used cut-out templates, paint, and his mouth as a spray gun (pretty much the way fire-eaters do when they spit fire) .