Online Photo Archive Brings Romania’s History Back to Life

But finding graphic evidence of our existence in analogue times is harder. If we take the 20th century, we can find a significant amount of digitized content that reflects that part of our history. But most of it comes from public institutions, newspapers, magazines and other organized archives. It scarcely represents people's life in that time.

A Romanian woman during a trip to the Fagaras mountains in central Romania. Photo: www.azopan.ro / Marta Gellert

This void in the graphic collective memory of most countries, which is perhaps most significant in post-communist societies, where archival sources were even more centralized, is being filled in Romania by Azopan. An amateur free online archive, it digitizes and publishes analogue pictures donated by the public.

"It is a kind of a mosaic of Romania's history," Edgar Szocs, the founder of the project told BIRN in a telephone interview from his home in Budapest. 

A group of men from Sic, in the Transylvanian county of Cluj in 1982. Photo: www.azopan.ro / Szoleczki Laszlo

Azopan's origins date back to 2007, when this young economist from Targu Mures in Transylvania, Romania, started collecting personal pictures. Seven years later, he asked two friends to come on board.

Placid scenes of rural and societal life in the early 20th century are featured in the photos and postcards that open the archive, in which the Transylvanian region for now plays a leading role.

A child carries a lamb in an unidentified location. 1948, Romania. Photo: www.azopan.ro / Sándor Szakács V.

Azopan bears testimony to World War I, with several photographs of wounded soldiers being treated in the Austro-Hungarian Hospital for Reservists in the city of Cluj, today a city within...