AIM FOTO BUCHAREST: 26 September - 17 October, 2025

Romania has a dynamic artistic scene, with growing interest in art photography. However, the lack of a dedicated event for the art photography market limits artists' exposure and the development of a robust ecosystem around this medium. AIM  Photo Bucharest aims to change this by providing a dedicated space for the interaction between artists, collectors, galleries, and the general public.

In major cultural capitals worldwide – Paris, London, New York – photography fairs annually attract thousands of visitors and significantly contribute to the art market's development. AIM Photo Bucharest seeks to position Bucharest on the map of key events in Eastern Europe.

Mobius and The Institute present AIM Foto Bucharest with an Amzei Takeover, a cultural program that reimagines Piața Amzei as a dynamic hub for contemporary photography. Over the course of the event, the square will be transformed into a meeting point for artists, curators, and audiences, fostering dialogue, discovery, and new perspectives on the photographic medium.

From its beginnings, photography has recorded people — portraits and self-portraits, confirming presence in a unique moment. From Bayard’s early Self Portrait as a Drowned Man (1840) to August Sander’s typologies and contemporary works, the constant has been the recognizability of the subject. Yet photographs can also be divided simply: those with people and those without.

The exhibition Diorama explores a space in between. Figures appear, but at a reduced scale, closer to architectural models than to the protagonists. The four artists present images where people blend into landscapes, formats, and layered constructions — elements of a larger whole. Nicu Ilfoveanu’s colourful beachgoers, Dani Ghercă’s abstracted megacities, Bogdan Gîrbovan’s delicate miniatures, and Iosif Király’s multi-layered works all situate the human as part of a broader system rather than the central focus.

Like in the works of Olivo Barbieri or Walter Niedermayr, the result is a situational landscape where characters exist yet also dissolve, inviting viewers to question their perspective and discover new ways of seeing the everyday.