UM01217 (2018–ongoing) is a visual documentary project about a space in transition: a former military base in Slatina, a small town in southern Romania, as it is transformed into something new a commercial development including the city’s first McDonald’s and KFC restaurants, a public park, and other projects that are still unfolding. Through this transformation, the project explores the coexistence of memory, nostalgia, and the idea of progress. While some people welcome the change as a sign of development, others experience it with mixed feelings, reflecting on what is being lost as the town moves forward.
For me, the site has always been part of my everyday landscape. As a child, I could only catch glimpses of the military base beyond the fence from my bedroom window, imagining the world hidden behind it as a forbidden space. More than that, as a child, I saw it as a safe place where the neighborhood’s stray dogs would run whenever the dog catchers came. Years later, returning with a camera, I documented not only the physical transformation of the site but also the emotional and social changes that came with it, unfolding new perspectives and contributing to a collective memory.
UM01217 is about how places and the people connected to them change over time, what change brings with it, and how our memories of a place continue to shape the way we see it. The project is developed through hundreds of analogue photographs taken at different stages of the transformation, accompanied by a video focused on the memories of the women who lived nearby, in a space historically dedicated mostly to men.
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Exhibition view, Traces of Forgotten Sites, WASP, Bucharest, Romania, 2023.