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TIME CAPSULE

2017- ongoing

Photographic prints, textile installation

Little has changed in the space my grandparents called home for over five decades, in a small village by the Danube's muddy shores in Southeast Romania.

There is no other setting so profoundly rooted in my consciousness. It is a place where I can revert to childhood innocence and curiosity, but also become painfully aware of the passage of time.

 

Time Capsule examines our relationship with memory, possessions, and place, questioning how human connections are constructed through physical objects and how material remnants continue to shape our emotional landscapes long after we are gone.

 

The work began as a way of bearing witness to a life still being lived. After my grandparents passed, I returned with a different kind of need, to rediscover what remained of them. They were no longer there, but the space was full of who they were. Objects carefully curated and cherished, set aside in a ritual-like manner, neither discarded nor forgotten, became silent triggers capable of collapsing time and pulling the past back into the present – plastic flowers in an antique vase, a candy bowl hidden behind the blinds that secretly stored sweets for me as a child, a framed photo of my grandparents before they married, a travel journal covering 14 years, a bookshelf filled to the brim by my late bibliophile grandfather.

 

The series is a testament to the lasting impact a life leaves on its surroundings and on those who carry it forward.

A selection from the series is included below. For the full edit or to discuss available works, please get in touch.

Works from this series have been exhibited at Copeland Gallery, London (2025), Festival OFF Arles, France (2024, 2025), Brighton Photo Fringe (2024), and Photobook Cafe, London (2024), amongst others.

An image from this series was featured in the British Journal of Photography, September 2024.

© Copyright Diana J Serban, Battlegrounds19
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