In a dreamlike photographs, Australian photographer Jane Long combined photographs of her own with those of Romanian photographer Costică Acsinte. The work “Dancing with Costică” digitized the public domain images of the photographer Costică Acsinte, who was active with photography during and after World War I. The Costică Acsinte Archive organization has gathered and digitized over 5,000 of his glass-plate negatives in addition to a small number of film and prints. Long created the project after stumbling upon the Archive on Flickr and has wanted to work on her retouching skills. Wanting to give them a more of a story, she places the ambiguous figures in a surreal setting loose enough to allow interpretation from the viewer. Though the real stories of the people in Acsinte’s original photographs will never be known, as he passed on in the 1980’s, Long created enough context for a new story of life to emerge for each.
Images by © Jane Long and © Costică Acsinte