Parterretrap

Romanian photographer and artist Bogdan Andrei Bordeianu (Bucharest, 1983) explores a seemingly simple question in his work: what is a landscape, actually? His photography revolves not only around what we see, but also around *how* we look at and give meaning to our surroundings. In Parterretrap, he shows older work from Romania alongside more recent work from the Netherlands.

A landscape seems self-evident, but it is not. It is the visible result of a continuous interplay between nature and man. This is certainly evident in the Netherlands: virtually every landscape here has been shaped, ordered, and controlled by human hands. Landscape is therefore not only about nature, but also about intervention, shaping, and deformation.
That field of tension is central to Bordeianu’s work. For instance, in earlier work, he documented the chaotic expansion of Bucharest, where urban growth advanced uncontrollably into agricultural areas, or the transformation of Romania after the fall of communism: abandoned industrial complexes, decay, and the messy transition to a new, modern reality.

In his recent work, in which he explores Dutch landscapes, the focus shifts from physical change to perception. Using the flawed panoramic function of his old phone, for instance, he creates landscapes that appear recognizable at first glance, but upon closer inspection consist of fragments that do not quite fit together. The image distorts, shifts, and disorients.

With his work, Bordeianu shows that looking is not an objective process. Our perception, like the landscape, is constructed and consists of separate moments that are merged into a whole by our brain—a process in which distortion is inevitable. The photographs confront us with the way we look today, and with how technology increasingly influences our perception of reality.

In Parterretrap, Bordeianu presents multiple series side by side for the first time in the Netherlands—older work from Romania and more recent work from the Netherlands—subtly juxtaposing two worlds and revealing both the differences and the surprising similarities.

https://bogdanbordeianu.ro