Dandelions
"I was adopted when I was four and a half years old. I was sold for 30 million lei and a pair of speakers.
Two years ago when I came to Bucharest everything stopped. My life just stopped. It has gotten way into drugs—I’m talking finding needles on the ground. But I have no aids, I’ve been to the doctor’s two months ago and have my blood test taken. But I do have hepatitis C. I could drop dead any second.”
- Loredana / Gara de Nord
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Dandelions is an ongoing photography project documenting the lives and struggles of people living with opioid addiction in Romania, a crisis that emerged from the country's post-communist transition and the heroin influx of the 1990s.
In 2018 I travelled to Bucharest to document issues of public health and met Alina, a social worker at a local anti-aids charity. She took me on the ambulance as the team offered syringe exchange and testing in the streets of Bucharest. That night there were people crowding outside the ambulance. One of them was Cristina, who showed me her scars as if to say "look at what I've been through”. She was struggling with addiction, working on the streets to pay her bills. There were many others like her, each with a unique story to be told.
Since then I have returned to Bucharest repeatedly to document the lives affected by this social crisis. I'm interested in portraying resilience and agency: how those living with addiction navigate circumstances often beyond their control. I remain amazed by people’s tenacious will to survive and I hope this body of work honours their stories.
In loving memory of Cristina Angela Ștefan 🕊 (1984-2022).︎︎︎
Exhibited at Visiting Art/ist 2025 in the Finnish Cultural Centre in Berlin. Curated by Mirjami Schuppert.
Supported by Patricia Seppälä Foundation, Finnfoto and the Foundation for Advancing Journalistic Culture.