Kathleen Laraia McLaughlin

The Color of Hay: The Peasants of Maramures

November 4, 2011 - January 5, 2012

In my work, I photograph people who have a deep felt sense of tradition. For a year, beginning October 1999, I lived in a remote village in northern Transylvania, Romania. I was in search of “Old Europe.” Two day’s journey from Vienna I found a valley where life proceeds as it has been described a hundred years back in time. During the day, fields echo to the sounds of sickle blades being sharpened; village lanes echo to the sound of water wheels grinding corn. In the autumn, women of all ages line village streets spinning yarn for winter weaving as men walk up and down in woven wheat hats. All year long they wear shoes whose design was old when the Romans conquered Dacia.

My purpose was to capture and convey images of their way of life before it becomes further compromised by globalization. In our modern world, we often feel we have “lost” something important, something precious. Though they do not know it now, these peasants are losing their customs in the same way our forebears lost theirs. They do not see themselves as beautiful or special, because they feel poor and ordinary. But I hope to show they embody beauty because of the way they have spent their days walking paths trodden by their grandparents. Because of the way their lives have become well worn like an old wooden spoon.

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Kathleen is a photographer and educator with an appetite for exploring the world. Wherever she goes, she brings a compassionate and curious lens backed by traditional film. For her efforts at capturing a disappearing world, she has received a Fulbright Senior Scholarship, IREX IARO Grant (NEH), and a Houston Center for Photography Fellowship for her work in Romania. Her images have appeared in PDN, LensWork, Rangefinder, B&W Magazine, Black + White Photography (UK), and The Times Saturday Magazine (UK). Her photographs have been exhibited both nationally and internationally and are in the permanent collections at the Museum of Photographic Art in San Diego, Western Virginia Museum of Art, and the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest. She received her MFA in Photography from Virginia Commonwealth University and is an Adjunct Faculty member at Loyola Marymount University and at the Academy of Art University San Francisco. http://klmphoto.com/

The photographs in this exhibition are part of a larger body of work included in her book of the same name, The Color of Hay: the Peasants of Maramures, that is available directly from the artist’s website www.colorofhay.com.