Experimental photography in Romania evolved from the Sigma1 Group’s (1970s, Timișoara)
Bauhaus-inspired, interdisciplinary experiments and pedagogy programs to subREAL’s (1990s,
Bucharest) conceptual, critical use of photography to question post-communist identity.
Iosif Kiraly, a student of Sigma and a founding member of subREAL, later became professor at the
University of Visual Art in Bucharest and introduced a new school of photography in Bucharest,
mentoring artists like Dani Gherca and Michele Bressan. This lineage connects through
interdisciplinarity, socio-political engagement, and innovative manipulation of time and space in
images. Each group responded to its era – Sigma1 under socialism’s constraints, subREAL during
capitalist transition, new Bucharest school of photography amid digital globalisation.
From Sigma’s interdisciplinary experimentation to Gherca’s digital cityscapes, Romanian artists
continually reinvent photography to reflect changing realities.