Costică Acsinte (1897–1984) was a one of Romania’s most prolific war photographers. After he was discharged in 1920, he opened a photographic studio in the southern side of Romania, in the small but, as you will see, vibrant town of Slobozia.
During the rest of his life, he took more than 5.000 photographs that were donated to the Ialomița County Museum by his family. According to Romanian law, the entirety of his work is now public domain.
My name is Cezar Popescu. First of all, I’m a photographer too. Out of passion for this art and considering the huge historical value, I decided to digitize all of Mr. Acsinte’s work, financing the beginning of this initiative out of my own pocket. I have scanned around 1.500 glass plates by now out of a total of 5.000 and counting.
However, there’s only so much I can achieve by myself. I managed to cover all the digitization costs by myself, around 2.000€ to be more precise (here you can take a look at the expenses). Talk about putting my money where my passion lies.
The problem arises when it comes to the photographic glass plates. They need special conditions to be properly archived and stored in order to preserve their increasing historical value. That’s where you come in.
According to ISO 18902 (Imaging materials — Processed imaging materials — Albums, framing and storage materials) the optimum conditions to store photographic plates require very low temperatures, low humidity and special materials (acid free, buffered, four flaps envelopes, boxes with metaly enforced corners and then some). As you can imagine, this is way out of my range of possibilities.
That’s why I need all the help I can get. Together we can save a gateway towards a long forgotten time when life used to be so much simpler.
In terms of costs,
For years, the plates have been stored in open air, which has lead to their destruction almost to the point of no return. These pictures represent a visual part of the region’s history like none other and deserve to be stored for generations to come.
Team of workers send by Malaxa to temporary work in Slobozia — 29th of April, 1945
Life and fashion of January 1940
Portraits
Until now, Mr. Acsinte’s work has been viewed by over 4 million people as part of the Flickr the Commons program.
Also, the story of this remarkable man’s life has been featured in TIME, Daily Mail, NY Times, Chicago Tribune and more.
Link: http://igg.me/at/acsinte/x/6146081
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