Between my partner and I there are 1950 km and 90 days apart. I met Tomas 5 years ago in Romania while he was working on his master’s photo project in the Carpathian Mountains. From our first year of long distance relationship I gathered a bag full with letters, photos and silly drawings that we mailed to each other. I call it the bag of our beginnings, which I keep to remember the beauty and the longing of our long distance relationship. In 2016, after Tomas finished his masters, he moved to Cluj, Romania to be with me. When we finally found some stability, on December 2019, Tomas received a job offer to coordinate ‘De Facktorij’, an art collective in Zoersel, Belgium. After months of debates, we finally decided to take this opportunity and switch countries. On February 12 th 2020, Tomas jumped on the bus to Belgium to start his new job. I stay in Cluj until April when Tomas would fly to Romania, we would take our two cats and drive together to our new home in Antwerp.

March 16 2020, Romania declared state of emergency. It’s also the day when all our plans fell through. Today I live with my parents. I moved out from our apartment in Cluj to Medias. My parents have an amazing garden and a small farm that brings some extra income for the family. This garden is my haven, and spring made my home bloom. We live together with nature. My grandparents live two houses down the road. I often find my grandmother somewhere in the garden pulling weeds or watering flowers. It keeps her sane. We have chickens that sometimes get sick and have to be cut before they die. I assist my grandmother dissecting the chicken and looking for the cause of death like a real autopsist. Nothing goes to waste and everything seems to have meaning here. Only I struggle to find meaning, to see the end of this. In these moments of darkness, I crave for light, so I search it with my camera until reality gets stripped of any meaning and it becomes raw emotions. Only then I feel like I can start building something new that makes sense and feels less like a dream.

May 16, Romania declares state of alert; some of the constraints are lifted. I feel relieved until I hear on the radio that traveling to Belgium is still not possible for at least 14 days.

Roxi Pop is a Romanian photographer who currently lives in Mediaș, Romania.

Pop studied photojournalism with a Fulbright scholarship at University of Missouri, School of Journalism. For her master's project, Roxi documented the life of Chautauqua Institution, the utopic gated community from upstate New York. After her return home, for two years she organized In/Out Photo Festival, the first documentary photo festival in Romania and developed projects to promote and support documentary photography in her home country.

From the transitioning process to her mother land, the ongoing project Today I am Home was born. Focused on identity and roots, the project explores the personal meaning of “home”. The project was presented at the De Donkere Kamer – the photography night at Bozar Museum in Brussels, Belgium, and was featured in national and international publications.

Roxi Pop: Life at 60 Million feet apart.