Mihai Stanescu

Pictured wearing the same dress from childhood to motherhood, when it no longer fit due to her pregnant belly, is Daiana Stanescu, the daughter of Mihai Stanescu, who kept this photographic diary of his daughter for 23 years. This is a unique series within the oeuvre of the artist, one of the most renowned cartoonists in Romania. It is a series that some of the younger generation of cultural practitioners in Bucharest grew up with, seeing it every day in the window of the small store Stanescu opened after the fall of communism. A bonding moment for father and daughter, a constant—just like the dress—within the flow of life, these yearly photographs are timeless little monuments to the powerful act of witnessing; the witnessing of his adored daughter distancing into her own adult life.

Stanescu graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Bucharest in 1966 and began work at the Ministry of Tourism before resigning and becoming a freelance cartoonist. In the 1970s and 1980s he won numerous awards, including, in 1982, a gold medal in a cartoon competition organized by the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, which resulted in international fame and some security at home, since he had been written about in the international press. Highly respected in his country for being the only cartoonist to opening criticize the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu, Stanescu remained active and critical of the political situation in Romania even after the fall of communism.

SK