This photograph is part of the series 'Steampunk Autochrome'

When Nicu Ilfoveanu received an old box-camera from a friend of his mother’s, he realized that it hadn’t been used in almost 50 years, but there was a roll of film left inside containing two pictures. He decided to develop them and bring these ‘latent images’ back to life a half century later. This experience inspired the series ‘Steampunk Autochrome’ (2004 - 2008). The title is a reference to both the autochrome procedure that enabled the first color pictures and the concept of Steampunk, a form of neo-romanticism linked to industrial ruins. Ilfoveanu started taking pictures of the present with a device from the past, while embracing the camera’s limitations due to its single enclosed aperture and long exposure time. He did not use the camera’s signature aesthetics, its dreamlike haze and color effects, to portray nostalgic scenes, but instead captured (post-industrial) landscapes, dreary wastelands, and bleak housing blocks. Because of this anachronistic device, some of the images of the present directly bear witness of their past and the ruins of communism, hence reinforcing the notion of photography as a way to freeze and fossilize time.