JONATHAN CHERRY: What gets you up in the morning?

ALEXANDRA CORNEANU: When I have to get up early, my alarm clock. But besides those days, I usually wake up at noon. I’m more of a night owl and I get most of my work done after 5pm.

JC: Are there any emerging photographers inspiring you at the moment?

AC: I find Lukasz Wierzbowski’s work really inspiring right now for it’s unique style and use of colors. Also, cargocollective.com is a great community of talented young photographers and a place where you can showcase your own work, find inspiration and grow as an artist.

JC: What is your current project all about?

AC: I’m currently developing the final project for my Bachelor’s Degree which looks at visual identity of the artist’s practice. I’ve created an alter ego for myself that plays around and changes it’s appearace going through different phases of my evolution. It explores the conscious and subconscious as a point from where the creative process starts. So, it constructs itself as a fragmentary narrative where the self-reflexive process of work reveals subjects and symbols that are recurrent in my images.

JC: What initially drew you to photography?

AC: As a child I was passionate about drawing and painting and growing up I believed that I would end up as a painter. This all changed once I received my first digital camera as a gift from my parents. I grew more and more attracted towards photography, learning what I could do through experiments, from various communities over the internet. I loved all the endless possibilities of the photographic medium, from film to digital, but I was mostly drawn by the way I could manage the use of colors. I finally ended up photographing more than drawing and decided to pursue this in the future.

JC: Where do you live and how is it shaping you?

AC: I’m from a small cvasi-known country called Romania. I still live in my hometown, Iasi, although I recently came back from studying in Manchester for three months. Living here all my life is making this city feel oddly claustrophobic at the moment, just because it’s so much part of who I am that I feel the need to escape it more and more. If I think about it, taking aside the raw beauty of this place, there’s not much to do here for a young artist. I mean, regarding opportunities to work and develop oneself. I consider I’ve reached maturity in terms of how this place could shape me and that it’s time to move on to somewhere new.

JC: Favourite tree?

AC: Any tree with lights on its branches, like a Christmas tree.