Castlefield Gallery Associates Spotlight: Alexandru Modoi

This month we have asked Alexandru Modoi to contribute to our Castlefield Gallery Associates Spotlight series, in which current Castlefield Gallery Associates share their thoughts on what the programme offers and how it has been useful for them.

Can you tell us a little bit about your practice? 

I wish to expand my PhD work and expertise into a festival – the Chester Photo Festival – where people from all over the world and at all levels of experience use photography as a creative practice to share their feelings, stories, and folklore to create better relationships between people through democratic photography ways.

My working methods include ethnographic and auto-ethnographic approaches, such as photo-elicitation and show-and-tell, which are part of my creative process. This involves looking at and discussing the photographs, creating new works, exhibiting, and writing reflections on the creative process, as well as publishing and sharing the findings with others. 

If for my PhD, Re-Imagining Romanian Culture from Afar through Still Life Photographic Images of Wolf Myths (2023), the focus is on my photographic ways to re-imagining my culture and heritage, Romania, through its wolf myths as I once experienced during my childhood; now people from other cultures with different stories and myths may also use photography as a creative practice to re-imagine their experiences and feelings. People, like myself, who have experienced it, could potentially gain the confidence to have their voices heard through their own culture and myths, and photography interests.