What were seeing are photos, but an X-ray of some souls and times, a

genuine analysis, no less in terms of realization than that of the worlds

most important novelists. 
Dinu Lazr, photographer
I salute the publication of such an album and can only hope that,
looking back, well soon be all the more adept at facing the future,
especially in this era, in which the banal tends to serve successfully as a
substitute for deeper convictions. Cristina int, foto4all.ro editor

CosticAcsinte was a Romanian

photographer, born July4, 1897,
in Periei, Ialomia County, who
died on January7,1984, in Slobozia. In 2009, Costic Acsinte
received the title of Honorary
Citizen of the Slobozia Municipality.
wikipedia

COSTIC ACSINTE ARCHIVE

FOTO SPLENDID

The glass plates we have inherited from Costic Acsinte are recomposed
from shards, like a childrens game; a world which is no longer foreign
for us because its time unfurled at a slower pace.

Anca-Maria Pnoiu, etnologist
The Costic Acsinte Collection is a lesson in photography, modesty,
and passion.
Vasile Doroli, photographer
Projects of such scope and historic-social importance as The Costic
Acsinte Collection are rare, and those initiated, sustained, and
developed by a sole individual are even rarer.

Maria Zaru, psychologist
All the people who passed through the photographers studio, Foto
Splendid, deserve our enending gratitude for their patience, posture,
and for the way in which they prepared for leaving history behind.

Constantin Nimigean, oitzarisme.ro editor
Acsinte received as a gift, in return for each frame he shot, an instant
from each persons life. We, however, we get the chance to look back,
past generations, to contemplate those we were and those we have
become.
Andrei Bdoiu, researcher

http://colectiacosticaacsinte.eu

SOCIAL LIFE
ATELIERELE ALBE

FOTO SPLENDID
Volume I

Costic Acsinte

FOTO SPLENDID

THE COSTIC ACSINTE COLLECTION

SOCIAL LIFE

Preface by Alina Pavelescu

Foreword Cezar Popescu
Caligraphy Anca Ciuciulin
Afterwords by Rzvan Ciuc & Filip-Lucian Iorga
Translation by Ioana Pelehati

This volume is part of the Foto Splendid album collection, a series that
showcases the major themes in the work of Costic Acsinte, curated by
Cezar Popescu. Foto Splendid was the name of the photography studio
where Acsinte worked from 1930 to the 1960s.
The photograph on the first cover is one of the few images left of
the Foto Splendid studio.
The Costic Acsinte Collection is a project initiated by Atelierele Albe &
The Ialomia County Museum. The photograph on page 96 is part of the
Florin Floreanu personal archive.
All photographs were taken by Costic Acsinte and are part of
the public domain.

No part of this publication may be reproduced

without the prior written permission
of the publisher.
2016 Editura Atelierele Albe.
All rights reserved.

Preface
Until some three years ago, the name of
Costic Acsinte evoked nothing of particular
significance, except, at best, for a small group
of Slobozia inhabitant who had personally
known the man, or who remembered being
photographed at his studio on the occasion of
some special events in their personal biographies. Starting with 2013, when Cezar Popescu
launched his ambitious plan of restoring and
recovering the photographic inheritance left
behind by Costic Acsinte, the former anonymous photographer became one of the most
interesting figures of 20th century Romania.
And the photographic clichs he had amassed
during a lifetime dedicated to his profession
are now seen by historians (and not just them)
as an important source of documenting Romanian civilization during the 19201960 era. It is
particularly reassuring for the historian to know
that the life and work of Costic Acsinte do not
constitute a case of Romanian exceptionalism. The photographers persona, biography,
and work, are representative for a social prototype which has all but gone extinct today the
small town photographer, whose lens accompanies the community through the moments of
its daily life and renders them immortal in a
way in which he believes they are worthy of being integrated within the towns later memory:

anniversaries, christenings, weddings, funerals,

school pageants, some family members departure to, or return from the frontlines, celebrating a craft that its practitioners are proud of,
days of rest with the family, or simply a portrait
destined for a close one, for whom the subject
whose identity remains as anonymous as
that of the photographer stages their own
identity, according to a canon which we can
deduce was significant for the eras mentalities
and mores. This is actually why the cultural
heritage of the Costic Acsinte collection of
photographs is scientifically significant: its
mundane character, unfiltered by the eyes of the
historian, sociologist, or anthropologist, except
via the esthetic canon of nave photography,
and, respectively, the subjects desire to be captured by the lens in those poses which conform
to his or her idea of honorable memorization.
How can we explain the ever deeper interest
demonstrated by contemporary Romanian society for Costic Acsintes photographs? Perhaps
the observations formulated by Susan Sontag
in her essays on photography could provide us
with a pertinent explanation here. In her book,
published in 1977, Sontag remarks, among
other things, that People robbed of their past
seem to make the most fervent picture takers,

Susan Sontag,
On Photography,
New York, Rosetta
Books, 2005, p. 7

at home and abroad. Everyone who lives in an

industrialized society is obliged gradually to
give up the past, but in certain countries, such
as the United Stated and Japan, the break with
the past has been particularly traumatic. This
observation is just fitting for post-Communist
Romania, I belive. The interest in documents
like Acsintes photographs is obviously a part
of the effort put n by 21st century Romanian
community to recover not just the memory of
the traumatic events in its recent past, but also
that of the normality which precedes a historic
trauma like war or communism, earmarked in
our contemporary imaginary as a time of peaceful living and stable social values.
Recovering Costic Acsintes photographs has
transformed the small town of Slobozia into an
emblematic place for Romanian civilization. The
photos speak to todays onlooker Romanian,
but not just about a normal world (the
word sounds like balm on the wounds of our
daily lives), content with itself, where life seems
to unfurl according to pre-established rhythms,
which assumes and integrates, with ingenuity and naturalness, the passions, griefs, and
unrest produced by the consecutive waves of

history. The memories from Acsintes Slobozia

thus come to signify the happy historic recovery
of the family memories which constitute a silent
heritage for each of us.
The album proposed here by Cezar Popescu,
the first one in a series titled Foto Splendid
after the name of Acsintes studio in Slobozia
for some half a century is dedicated, in
accordance with the choice made by its editor,
to social life. It reunites a small part of the
photographss which had already been published, in collaboration with the Ialomia County
Museum on the now famous site colectiacosticaacsinte.eu. It is a visual illustration of Romanian social life, spread out over more than half
a century, with important moments in the life of
the local community, with pictures of a carefree
childhood, craftmen proud of their professions,
partygoers who know how to share their joy,
fulfilled families, women who naturally assume
their femininity. And, every now and then, a
sign of the changing times, carrying along in
their slower or faster flow, the flotsam of our
historic identity.
Alina Pavelescu, archivist

Foreword
I am not an enthologist, nor an anthropologist,
not an art critic, nor a historian. I am not a lot
of things. But, what I can tell you with certainty
is that I love photography and Acsintes photos
in particular. And I conceived this first volume
(which I do hope will not be the only one!) as
an instrument, raw material, if you will, for
future history, ethnology, and anthropology
studies. I tried to avoid influencing the way in
which we each perceive Acsintes photos to
the best of my abilities this being the main
reason for which the photos in the book are so
small: just as old Costic would have had them
printed out, on a 1:1 natural scale.

Even before sending the album out to the

printing press, I managed to include a testimony in this book. The testimony of the man who
discovered Acsintes plates, back when he was
a museum director. The gentleman in question
is called Rzvan Ciuc and its rather likely
that, without his clairvoyance, we wouldnt have
even known that there was evera photographer
called Costic Acsinte today.
Those who helped me bring this project to the
point where its at today were many, each to his
or her own abilities and wishes and i expressly
want to thank oll of them here.
Cezar Popescu, editor

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116

The treasure in the grocers crates

In the fall of 1970, after the lights had gone out
over the stage of Peoples Theater in Clrai,
and the Sad Angels had flown away, I arrived
in Slobozia. I wanted it really was no accident to get a job at the County Museum
[of Ialomia, editors note], back then just a new
building with ample windows and an inner staircase. If I hadnt come across those carols,
I wouldve turned it into and art museum
In the small town, county capital, with a railway
station and an iron bridge over the brownish
waters of Ialomia river, with a monastery from
which the monks had been chased out, with
dusty old shops, a narrow river bed, and an
underground neighborhood (in 500), a few
steps away from a regional hospital, with a
county line drawn by the Communist Party,
rye brandy, grilled pork rolls, and beer, the remnants of a hotel still haunted by a woman who
had once been Miss Europe, young photographer Doru Popescu, the son of a pharmacist,
was tying and untying faces and memories in
a world aligned to ready reckoners, all the way
down to the barrier to Urziceni.
For 100 lei, Doru sold me a Lubitel wide-format
camera, which accompanied me in my fildwork
as a museum curator for years. He was also the

one to tease and taunt me with a beauty, Alice

Flondor, and the one who introduced me to
Vasile, the grandson of an old-time photographer who had failed his career as a frontline
photographer (see Album Air Force Group 3.
Photographs from the World War, years 1916,
1917, 1918, 1919. Sergeant Photographer Acsinte
Constantin, 363 images, The Ialomia County
Museum), but who would make it in Slobozia
as a picture-taker, with a studio and a name:
Foto Splendid, Costic Acsinte.
For 14 years, I was contemporary of Vasiles
grandpa. I had married Maria. My mother-inlaw, also Maria, kept telling us to go have at
least a couple of picture taken at Acsintes
not anybody else one to have and to keep for
our old age, and the other one for her, so she
could show her neighbors and relatives that her
daughter has settled down with a decent guy.
One day, we actually went down to Acsintes,
called out at his gate. This fat, fat man came
out, couldnt even voice out a question, like
whos calling? We left without having our
picture taken, and that was the end of that.
As a museum curator back then, I had a lot of
interests: the history of Slobozia, the recon-

117

struction of the folk Ialomia county costume

(a party task), the Macedonian-Romanian
population, agricultural machines I had even
come up with this idea of putting together an
Agrarian Life Museum, which wouldve been a
museum of agriculture, and something else
I was on the lookout for subjects, documents,
tools. Mr. Ciuc, Doru Popescu kept prodding me, go over to Vasiles, he should know
what Costics got left.
Id run into Vasile (Vasilic, as his relatives
called him), when he didnt reach flooding
quotas, down at the pub in the main square (he
died, God rest his soul, because of the drink).
I remember it was a Wednesday, in the spring
of 86 (I think), mom was fasting, so he sent us
out to buy nettles. Vasile, is there really nothing left from your old man, or from your dad?
(Sandu, also a photographer, was Costics son,
Vasile was Sandus son). Theres some crates
left, maybe theres something in those.
Vasile and I headed out to this place by the stadium. In a shack made out of wooden planks,
with no flooring, a couple of sacks full of ropes
(made out of rags, for runners), a few gardening
tools, and a short distance away some grocers
crates stacked to the brim with photographic
plates! Mr. Rzvan, go look for your tractors,
man!
The following day, Vasile brought the boxes
over to the Museum. What did i see on the first
glance? Portraits and group photos (a photo

118

studio exclusive around the county), she and

him having their picture taken, in German
clothes or folk costumes, used at school pageants or in church, carts from Brila stacked
with peasants in rough, homespun coats, with
hats and scarves on their heads, not too many
tractors (a Lanz Bulldog tilling the field, a Twin
City usa, perhaps used for powering the Slobozia Electric Plant), groom and bride, wedding
bands (why so few gypsies in a town of gypsies?
And why is the church missing?) I run through
some photo sets again. The well-known poses:
right hand on the hip, right leg over the left one,
left elbow resting on a stand with or without
flowers, etc. I particularly liked the Capone
lieutenants pictures (men in hats, cigarettes
in the corner of their mouth, and a scarf tied
around each ones neck). The mood is set by
the plastic portraits and subjects.
Finally, a touching fresco of a provincial town, in
a Romania that was a province of Europe.
Costic Acsinte had a stable client base. He
didnt hesitate to go ride his bike to the outlying
villages around Slobozia, never further off, says
Mihaela, the granddoughter of Sandu, Costics
son. He didnt have the time to do it. You can
feel that he was often shooting in a hurry. In
the town scenes he hesitated to show stopped
motion. He would photohraph in long takes, by
using small diaphragm apertures, in order to
obtain a maximum depth of field.
I keep looking at his photographs. None of the
characters are laughing. He had no schooling;

for instance, I dont think he was aware of Carol

Popp de Szathmri or of Alexandru Bellu.
Would he have used that knowledge? Who
knows Whats for sure is that his autarchy individualized him, made him unique in the world
of those who dared write about a community
and remained a landmark for the 20th century.
I guess his patience was more helpful to him
than the camera he used; a large 1824 folding
camera with and cassettes, for instance, suitable for glass plates, or a Verascope Richard,
especially used in his voyages (although, since
it was portable, he would also use 45107mm,
very thin glass plates).

mia County Museum), after New York Times,

Time, Adevrul, etc., his family doesnt get why
the best grandpa of all the grandpas in all the
world (Mihaela, 2015) is receiving international
attention and how much there is to gain from
this affair

I paid Vasilic Acsinte without him asking

me to four or maybe five hundred lei. From
that money, which he didnt want to receive
(I cant, man, Im ashamed), he bought a pack
of cigarettes and a lighter. The next day, he
asked me to the restaurant of hotel Muntenia,
and with the money off the photographic plates,
we got brandy and Jidvei wine, pork roast with a
side of fries, and even coffee. With all the poverty back then, we felt like noblemen.

There would be one more thing, just to get the

pointless talk out of the way. I had two collaborators at the County Museum: the Tel and Gabi
Lmureanu. Husband Tel got drunk and broke
a number of photographic plates, out of enthusiasm. Gabi Lmureanu, after having practiced, for a short while and with great efforts,
cleaning the glass plates with vinegar, was sent
by me to the museum curatorship courses at
the National Center for Training Cultural Personnel in Bucharest. With Gabi, the Centers
director, Mircea Dumitrescu, and professor
Georgeta Stoica (an eminent ethnographer),
we agreed that Gabi Lmureanus certificate
paper to become a museum curator would
focus on Costic Acsinte (with a cs, not an
x). Many landmarks supported our cas: social
history, anthropology, photographic techniques,
the dimensions of an open cultural area, etc.

A major national newspaper wrote that Costic Acsintes family tried to get rich off the
photo plates. Lets get things clear: not even
to this day, after all the gubbub in the media,
not after Foto Splendid (written by George
Stoian and published together with the Ialo-

Gabi, who liked to read while on holiday, got an

eight, after plenty of arguing and interventions.
She later divorced Tel, got married in Israel and
became Mrs. Druchs the first expert to
have handle the restoration of a part of Acsintes work.

119

The truth is that, after the inventory procedures

were completed, the first ones to have attempted perhaps not a restoration in the true sense
of the word, but a primary cleaning of the glass
plates, followed by a printing for research
and exhibitions, were Nae Mrescu a
guy whod given up on his secondary architecture studies, because he wanted too much to
be free, have kids, and many adventures with
Jacques-Yves Cousteau , Doru Popescu and
Cmpeanu The Doctor from the Ialomia
Tribune. All three of them on my demands.

costs $28, vat and p&p not included. He frantically looks for solutions to the solution when
the gelatin raises off the glass, is cracked and
moldy.

Acsinte has received accounts on facebook,

flickr, twitter, etc., and Cezar is still tempting
the box that contains the history of Acsinte
from Slobozia: throught restoration, conservation, interpretation.

Destiny made it so that the son of Doru

Popescu, Cezar, would go looking for Acsinte starting with 2013 (please make sure to spell
his name right!). He spends a lot, and, whats
more, he spends it out of his own pocket, even
though hes got a collaborators contract with
Ialomia County Museum. For the smallet size
negs, 913cm, a pack of 50 envelopes in which
the plates would be preserved post-scanning,

120

Cezar Popescu, the manager of the project

Costic Acsinte Collection, has made it so that
our protagonists photographs were seen over
17 million time, as Costic Acsintes flickr
account is followed by nearly 3.000 people.
The project website has been visited by 133.536
people from 141 countries.

See how a modest corner of the world is in awe of

the photographer
Rzvan Ciuc, museum curator
Slobozia, april 2015

Afterword
We forget out ancestors all too soon, we too
easily knock down our heritage buildings, we
respect our past far too little, we seem to be
some of the most forgetful among Europeans.
In this general athmosphere of comfortable,
guilty amnesia, eccentrics pop up, and they
stubornly refuse to take part in the destruction,
to let us forget (ourselves). Cezar Popescu is
one of these defenders of our identity. And the
task he has taken upon himself is not an easy
one at all. He works with a perishable, fragile
material and fights to ward off the disappearance of these images, which tell us something
about who we once were.
Rescued as if through a miracle, the archive of
Ialomia native photographer Costic Acsinte
was brought back into the light, the images
have been restored, and Popescu has given
them a new lease on life, this time in the electronic medium, and on the international stage.
Because the work of this once forgotten Romanian photographer have become famous all
over the world, through the Internet.
I am all the happier that forgetfulness has failed
this time, since my ancestors were land owners
in Poiana Ialomia, while Costic Acsinte
was born in Periei, the adjoining village of land

owners. It very well may be that our families

were once related, in the darkness of history.
Costic Acsintes photographs are valuable for
anyone researching the history of Romania at
the end of the 19th century and the beginning
of the 20th century. For social history, the
Acsinte collection is a genuine treasure trove.
The same goes for the history of the Brgan
plains, which is otherwise rather lacking in such
testimonies.
Its value and rarity also stem from the fact that
the collection saved by Cezar Popescu tells a
rarely heard story. The boyear families, the big
bourgeoisie and countryside elites have carefully preserved the portraits and photographs of
their ancestors, vehicles of their memory and
intruments for affirming and maintaining their
social status. The poor peasants, however, and
the workers of the small towns, the neighborhood dwellers and the colorful world of those
who went out to look for their own luck in the
Brgan plains were far less careful (because
they didnt really have the energy to care for
such details) to have their own faces immortalized and to perpetuate their family memories.
This is Costic Acsintes great merit: his photos
dont only show thin-skinned folk, but also figures with rougher faces, hands calloused from

121

work, tired eyes, children who were too thin, but

delighted with their modest toys.

characters, most of them anonymous, but who

manage to silently tell us charming stories.

Acsintes work is not just a resource for historians and sociologists, but also an esthetic
delight for the lover of old photography and old
tales in general. Since these photos tell stories,
are expressive, and charm you, be they candid,
rough, filled with sadness or joy. They were taken by a talented photographer, who already deserved to be recovered and who now deserves
to be ever better known, alongside his suite of

I salute the publication of these photographs

in a series of albums, a reason for joy for those
who already professed a passion for Acsintes
art, as well as one of great interest for those
about to discover it.

122

Filip-Lucian Iorga, historian

Bucureti, April 2015

All digitized files of Costic Acsinte photographs

are freely available on the Costic Acsinte Collection
projects website.
http://colectiacosticaacsinte.eu

Distribution

Atelierele Albe
Str. Rovine, bl. 18A, ap. 2, Slobozia, Ialomia
contact@atelierelealbe.eu
Orders
Phone (+40) 723.178.176
Web www.atelierelealbe.eu
Facebook www.fb.com/atelierele.albe

Print by InterBrand on HP Indigo

Str. Oboga, nr. 1923, sector 6, Bucureti
Phone (+40) 31.401.6162
Email contact@interbrand.ro
Web www.interbrand.ro

What were seeing are photos, but an X-ray of some souls and times, a
genuine analysis, no less in terms of realization than that of the worlds
most important novelists. 
Dinu Lazr, photographer
I salute the publication of such an album and can only hope that,
looking back, well soon be all the more adept at facing the future,
especially in this era, in which the banal tends to serve successfully as a
substitute for deeper convictions. Cristina int, foto4all.ro editor

CosticAcsinte was a Romanian

photographer, born July4, 1897,
in Periei, Ialomia County, who
died on January7,1984, in Slobozia. In 2009, Costic Acsinte
received the title of Honorary
Citizen of the Slobozia Municipality.
wikipedia

COSTIC ACSINTE ARCHIVE

FOTO SPLENDID

The glass plates we have inherited from Costic Acsinte are recomposed
from shards, like a childrens game; a world which is no longer foreign
for us because its time unfurled at a slower pace.

Anca-Maria Pnoiu, etnologist
The Costic Acsinte Collection is a lesson in photography, modesty,
and passion.
Vasile Doroli, photographer
Projects of such scope and historic-social importance as The Costic
Acsinte Collection are rare, and those initiated, sustained, and
developed by a sole individual are even rarer.

Maria Zaru, psychologist
All the people who passed through the photographers studio, Foto
Splendid, deserve our enending gratitude for their patience, posture,
and for the way in which they prepared for leaving history behind.

Constantin Nimigean, oitzarisme.ro editor
Acsinte received as a gift, in return for each frame he shot, an instant
from each persons life. We, however, we get the chance to look back,
past generations, to contemplate those we were and those we have
become.
Andrei Bdoiu, researcher

http://colectiacosticaacsinte.eu

SOCIAL LIFE
ATELIERELE ALBE