Rather than avoiding the ordinary details of our landscape, the LA photographer is focusing on them—and abstracting them into something new.
Not much in the history of photography has been internalized by the American psyche—there’s no Gutenberg, or Edison, or Lumière being spoonfed into school curriculums and quiz shows. This is peculiar considering how ubiquitous the medium is: Instagram is now the second most popular social network (behind Facebook), and, notably, the fastest growing network for advertisers due to its engagement. It’s the first thing many people look at when they wake up in the morning, and that level of use has created an unprecedented culture of support and interest in the fine art world—and also an unprecedented number of selfies, too.
Working under the moniker @casualtimetravel, Velicescu is less interested in people and more interested in the objects that people create (and often neglect): buildings, cars, signs, lampposts. These objects are frequently framed in a way that’s intensely blunt and slightly askew, pastel layers toppling amongst each other, held stable by impossibly pure skylines and alien pavements.
While she talks, Velicescu’s eyes don’t wander to the world going by—she’s not constantly looking for her next shot. “I don’t really do that street photography thing,” she says. Just in case, she keeps a couple of cameras in her car (her go-to is a Mamiya 6, for the gearheads out there), but for the most part, her photos come from blocks of time set aside for the task of exploring a specific spot, mostly within the greater Los Angeles area, which provides the work with a placid, sunbleached quality.