Nearly twenty years ago the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, and changed the world. An indirect and largely unknown consequence of this event is the disappearance of a central-European minority - a minority that Mona Simon belongs to. The Transylvanian Saxons are a German population group living in what is today Romania. In the 12th Century the King of Hungary invited these so-called colonists to settle and defend this part of the country from invasion and to contribute to its development by ways of their extensive agricultural and technical knowledge. They originated from different areas of the Roman-German empire, mainly the Rhineland. To compensate for their slim population, which in the course of history never exceeded 250,000, the Transylvanian Saxons develop strong group cohesiveness, evident in the social structure, as well as a culture with considerable visibility. The well-known Fortified Saxon Churches some of which have been declared world culture heritage sites by the UNESCO are one example of this culture. Over the course of the centuries this region first belonged to Hungary, then Austria respectively to Austria-Hungary, finally becoming a part of Romania in 1918, with a multi-cultural population of Romanians, Hungarian Saxons, Romas, Jews and so on.
1990. Mona Simon is ten years old. In this Year almost all Saxons leave Romania, approximately 850 years after their arrival, migrating “back” to Germany.
A whole people collectively decide to virtually disappear. The economic situation of the Ceausescu Era and the assimilation policy towards minorities advocated by Romania’s communist party, the so-called National Communists, plays a considerable part in this decision. Only about 10% of them remain in Transylvania; in the cities they develop an active political and cultural life, yet in the country-side the last Transylvanian Saxons grow lonely.
The young photographer’s work deals with exile and remembrance and takes place in the midst of an individually, as well as collectively painful context - that of the vast disappearance of a nation. To give this work the title of a Tchaikovsky piece „Memory of a Beloved Place“ alludes to the 19th Century nostalgia of a paradise lost, a paradise in Eastern Europe which the artist sets out to find some 20 years later. Her approach can not be anything but clearly different, as the means of expression are when comparing photography to music or even poetry, such as Baudelaire’s poem „le vert paradis des amours enfantines“(“The green paradise of childlike loves”). Language and music can breath new life into the past world, yet memories cannot be photographed. At most, the origin, the place, where the memory was formed, can be shown in its present materialistic state and the souvenir is embedded in this reality. Photography as such, therefore, demands and cultivates a permanent dialectic between memory and reality.
At times, the two seem so closely intertwined that they almost overlap. Taking place in the Transylvanian landscapes, still lives, or the reoccurring images of animals such as dogs, cats, horses and sheep, in everything, which is what Fernand Braudel calls „the long time“ in “The Mediterranean”. It is the time of the slow, almost static geography; that of the stones, plants and animals in which the fast-paced history of human activity is captured. Continuity is the place where these childhood memories are staged most clearly. Even the simple animal or landscape compositions seem to reflect the perspective of the child in tune with her surroundings.
Still the human reality shown in the pieces, uncovers the divide between today and yesterday. The houses, once tended to with great care by the Saxons and now inhabited by Romanians and Romas are in partial ruins. Even the cemetery has been abandoned, traditionally a place that due to its link to collective memory is last to be given up on. It is clear that a people are missing from these streets, are missing in these houses. What remains is the reflection of a sad, old lady, surrounded by portraits of loved ones in a distant country, seemingly pondering the reality of her existence.
The Tchaikovsky quote also reveals a discrepancy between old illusions and new realities. Throughout the whole of this photographic documentary one subliminal question dominates, the question of national identity. Tchaikovsky’s world, in which one can simply feel the longing for a simple world, is that of the 19th century. It is the time of nations and nationalisms, where the question of identity is simplified by the unification of nation-states. In 1983 Benedict Anderson wrote “Imagined Communities” whereby robbing the nation-states of their illusions, by contending that they had in fact not developed spontaneously from an ancient national culture. According to Anderson, not too long ago the nations „imagined“ themselves, by generalizing or even creating cultural similarities between heterogeneous ethnic groups.
All Transylvanians have long been in opposition, resisting the Germanification by the Austrians, the Magyarization by the Hungarians, and finally the National Communist Romanization by the Romanians. Ever since the very beginning, the people of this region have refused to be put into a simplified context and lose their multicultural ground.
Evidence of this strong diversity can be found in many works from and about Transylvania. Many of these pieces are didactical, following a legitimate standard of portraying every nation in an impartial light. The observer is traditionally aided in recognizing the signs of affiliation, such as the Saxon embroidery, the Romanian crosses, or the Roma skirts. Here, though, this principle is intentionally forfeited and with it its side effect of confining to one identity.
The multiculturalism is omnipresent, but since no photo legends, no commentaries and no explanations are given the reader is left to individually interpret this identity. In a collage that refuses to narrate we see Romanians, Romas and Saxons scattered about freely. This phenomenon is uncommon in Transylvania’s long tradition of photo documentation. And, as is the case in all multi-ethnic societies, stereotypes play a big part in the definition of identity - more than the western states may want to believe at times. Mona Simon subtly portrays the values and boundaries of stereotypes. What is a real Roma? The emblematic, typical, sad, desolate man with a long beard? A small blond girl? The absence of a clear dramaturgy in the sequence of pictures, triggers the solemn deconstruction of a traditional Transylvanian world view and allows the photographer to document her own perplexity in the midst of a largely similar and yet so different world - thus seeing the intense transformation of an area.
For the first time in history these ethnic groups do not live in strict separation of each other (though they always co-existed peacefully), but are beginning more and more to intertwine.
Inter-ethnic marriages are no longer shameful and the possibility of a Saxon Mayor being elected in a city where Saxons are scarce these days. The vision presented to us here of a changing world is one that is simultaneously empathetic and distanced. Its suggestive quality emphasizes the question of the nature of national identities in the 21st Century.
The aesthetic in the young photographer’s pieces crosses borders. She interchanges between the emotional, up-close view of a child on a puppy, the sociological form of documentation and finally the artists’ vision. She consciously chooses to take on a non-committal position, which allows her to reveal in her work all the many different layers of memory. Her collage goes far beyond her own memory. Most Saxons have been gone for some twenty years, their culture having been faded out for over 60 years, seldom finding mention in Museums or schoolbooks. After the disappearance of a people the memory of their culture seems to lose its voice and fade away in this contemporary Transylvanian chorus. This would be the second death - an eternal one.
Mona Simon’s documentation is not a silent farewell bid to a vanishing culture, but rather a still and sober appraisal of the past and the present that echoes the inevitable: „We existed.“
Without words she asks for the right to remembrance.
Catherine Roth, research scientist at the Institute for Communication Elico (University of Lyon), former Director of culture at the Council of Europe.
