Sinziana Velicescu

Sinziana Velicescu is a photographer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She is a graduate of the University of Southern California with a B.A. in Comparative Literature and Film. Her photography explores human intervention in nature within landscapes that have undergone political, social, or environmental change. Her photographs have been shown in galleries internationally in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Hamburg, Melbourne, Tokyo, and Rome. Most recently, Photo Boite named her one of the 30 Female photographers under 30 to watch in 2016. We are excited to feature Sinziana in the printed version of Issue 11 Metropolis : Los Angeles. Check out her amazing work and grab a copy today! 

Order Now!

sinziana_velicescu_02

sinziana_velicescu_03

On The Periphery

“On the Periphery,” explores the aesthetic and utilitarian effect of architecture in and around parts of Los Angeles that are less visited by the general public. Los Angeles is my home town, and to keep from falling out of love with it, I eliminate the details that I do not wish to experience, both psychologically and visually. I use photography to learn to see the same city differently every time. The limitations of a frame allow me to distance myself from some of the uglier truths Los Angeles has to offer. I am attracted to its clean lines and subtle tones, as well as spaces that are freed from the restraints of an overgrowing population saturated with advertisement and modern technology. There is almost always an underlying desire in my photographs to escape to another place or perhaps another time.

“On the Periphery” also replicates the loneliness of driving through a city that is most often experienced from a car. Spending too much time inside an automobile, as is customary for most Angelinos, can become an alienating experience. It is from these spaces between point A and B that I draw most of my inspiration. These are the areas that lie on the edge of where we are going to. On the periphery of our destinations, human interaction is replaced by encounters with the city scape as the surrounding architecture begins to take on personality. Buildings and facades are keepers of stories. They, like us, have a chronological lifespan, taking on new characteristics with every layer of paint, and their exteriors can only hint or adversely distract us to the realities that take place within.

sinziana_velicescu_04

sinziana_velicescu_05

sinziana_velicescu_06

sinziana_velicescu_07

sinziana_velicescu_08

sinziana_velicescu_09

sinziana_velicescu_10

The moments captured in my photographs are fragments of a cityscape’s lifetime that are most often ignored or hidden from view. These are the details missed by an entire population concerned solely with reaching a destination. Ultimately I am painting an abstracted portrait of a rapidly changing cityscape, with a subtle focus on the occasional reminder of its previous manifestations. The urban environment nowadays develops so quickly that every little change is often taken for granted. Natural landscapes more or less last forever but the green wall I photographed last week recently got graffitied on and is now a shade of grey; or that beautiful hand painted sign in Thai Town was recently transformed into a T-Mobile billboard. I often revisit my subjects and photograph them multiple times as they go through their various stages – often times they change or disappear completely. Essentially I am trying to capture some ephemeral aspects of Los Angeles that may be gone tomorrow.

sinziana_velicescu_11

sinziana_velicescu_12

sinziana_velicescu_13

sinziana_velicescu_14

sinziana_velicescu_01

sinziana_velicescu_15

sinziana_velicescu_16

sinziana_velicescu_17

sinziana_velicescu_18

sinziana_velicescu_19

sinziana_velicescu_20

To see more of Sinziana’s work, please visit her website.