Dacia & Chauffeur: Portrait series features iconic car of Romania’s communist period

Dacia & Chauffeur, a series of portraits of people and their cars by photographer Horatiu Sava, is the Second Place Series Winner at this year’s LensCulture Portrait Awards.

The series, which features portraits of people and their Dacia 1300, the car that most Romanians owned during the Communist period, references in part the photographer’s childhood, when “at least regarding the car, everybody was the same,” the photographer explains in a description of the project shared by LensCulture.

At the same time, it also signals the shift in the significance of the car. “But it is no longer a sign of equality but of inequality; it is the car of the poor who do not have several thousand euros to afford a newer one. It is important for me to show the drivers in this series because with this I want to show my respect and sympathy for these people.”

You can see the photo series here. More of Horatiu Sava’s work here.

The 9th annual LensCulture Portrait Awards aimed to discover and reward photographers who are making exceptional photographic portraits today. The awards were open to photographers at all levels of experience, and all genres of portraiture. The competition was open to all types of artistic approaches, including staged, fiction, fashion, metaphoric, self-portrait and conceptual work.

The gallery of winning works is available here.

(Photo: Scyther5 | Dreamstime.com)