Cosmopolis

© Chris Maluszynski

Romania is one of Europe’s poorest countries. While the majority of the lower income population lives in the countryside, it is in the northern outskirts of Bucharest where the better educated and generally better off Romanians are found. Engineers, lawyers, business people and doctors. Many of them working for big multinational companies.

Since the fall of communism many gated communities have been built in the north of Bucharest, and become a kind of micro utopias separated from the outside by fences and guards.

Cosmopolis, located some 15km north of the city center, is not the richest of these communities, but the biggest of them. It currently houses around 3500 people in 2000 units (apartment blocks, two-family homes and one family villas). The entire project is for 10 000 units if it is ever fully built.

This body of work is my contribution to a documentary/art project on the theme of "Bucharest Microtopias" that was made possible by an artist residence program organised by the city of Bucharest, where five Nordic photographers were invited to participate. Each photographer chose a particular area or community of the city to document.

I chose to explore the gated habitats of the better-off Romanians, and found myself in Cosmopolis.
-Chris Maluszynski 2015

click to view the complete set of images in the archive