Romanian photographer and artist Bogdan Andrei Bordeianu (Bucharest, 1983) explores in his work an apparently simple question: what is a landscape anyway? His photography is not only about what we see, but also about how we look at and give meaning to our surroundings. In Parterretrap he shows older work from Romania alongside more recent work from The Netherlands.

A landscape seems self-evident, but it is not. It is the visible result of a continuous interaction between nature and man. Especially in the Netherlands this is obvious: almost every landscape here has been shaped, ordered and controlled by human hands. Landscape is thus not only about nature, but also about intervention, shaping and deformation.

This tension is central to Bordeianu’s work. In previous work, for example, he recorded the chaotic expansion of Bucharest, where urban growth encroached unchecked on agricultural areas, or the transformation of Romania after the fall of communism: abandoned industrial complexes, decay and the messy transition to a new, modern reality.

In his recent work examining Dutch landscapes, the focus shifts from physical change to perception. For example, using the faulty panorama function of his old phone, he creates landscapes that at first glance appear recognizable, but on closer inspection consist of fragments that do not quite fit together. The image distorts, slides and disorients.

Through his work, Bordeianu shows that looking is not an objective process. Our perception, like the landscape, is constructed and consists of individual moments that are assembled by our brain into a whole – a process in which distortion is inevitable. The photographs confront us with the way we see today, and with how technology increasingly influences our perception of reality.

In Parterretrap, Bordeianu shows for the first time in the Netherlands several series side by side – older work from Romania and more recent work from the Netherlands – through which he subtly juxtaposes two worlds, revealing both the differences and the surprising similarities.