Winner of Month of Photography Los Angeles- Projections 2019- Lucie Foundation

Born in Transilvania, Emanuela Bocse grew up in an artistic family that chafed under the censorship and repression of the Ceusescu regime. With limited access to Western art and literature, the artistic community she was part of looked to nature and the lives of ordinary people for inspiration. It was her father, a landscape artist who encouraged her love for nature, while her grandfather, an artisan potter introduced her to its elemental aspects and sensual forms.

In her work, Bocse applies the truth and purity of nature, and the interplay of color and light, as a counterpoint to the censorship and disinformation of the communist era (and the current political and cultural turbulence in the United States). She moved to los Angeles in 2001, and since then has been focusing on creative photography.

"The most exciting thing to me is working on projects that involve the construction of ideas and their execution. Being interested in design helps me approach the subject from a broader scope," she says. Her work can also be spontaneous and immediate. "Sometimes I will have the idea before the model but sometimes it is very spontaneous. I'll see the essence of my subject in a moment and capture it right there."

Inspired by the Impressionists and the post-Impressionists- Renoir, Degas, Picasso, Pissarro, Cezanne and Van Gogh- she often uses nature as a backdrop to capture and distill the lives and struggles of people through compositions that celebrate the human spirit and form in quietly revealing moments, as well as moments of exuberance, humor and vitality.