15th June 2015
Romanian stories in Britain (V) Ion Paciu: ‘I love London, I miss it so much when I’m away’
I moved to the UK 12 years ago. I lived outside of London for a while before moving to London after 3 years.
My integration into the British community was bumpy at first as I didn’t speak English at all. Somehow I made it, and now I am a photographer and at the same time I run a private school of photography in central London.
This is not a job, a duty or obligation; this is my hobby and my spiritual food. It is the way I live my life, taking pictures and sharing my experience, knowledge, and skills with my students.
Not speaking the language meant a very slow beginning, but fortunately the very open mind British community helped me a lot. I made my start into a public sector job; it was an office / admin job, and it was more than enough for me to fuel my ‘take off’.
And I did. Within a few months I was already managing a small project for the same organisation. In the meantime my biggest hobby, my camera, was taking more and more of my time and my energy. Suddenly I developed a big passion to share my knowledge with other people (friends, acquaintances, and people from Internet). A new hobby was born. I loved it!
It wasn’t long before I resigned from my project management job. I had realised that I needed to “get out”, I couldn’t stay in the office anymore. I would have probably been fired anyway; my mind was very busy with my photography jobs and teaching so I resigned.
It was officially the beginning of my full time freelance photography life and also as a teacher. I set up my own photography school and in a very short time I was teaching my new students, our photography school is one of the top private photography schools in London.
My other side job is photography jobs, and in my spare time personal photographic projects. One of my last projects was ‘Romanian Portraits from London’; a project initiated by ICR London. The exhibition was hosted by Horniman Museum for about 8 months. This project helped me to enlarge my relationship and get to better know the Romanian community in London.
Another project that is close to my heart is ‘People I didn’t know’, which consists of large series of portrait images of strangers taken on the streets of London.
I love London, it’s my home, I miss it so much when I am away. I am a British citizen and I am proud. I feel very lucky to have been given such an opportunity to explore another very different community while I am able to share a Romanian glass of wine with my colleagues friends from the diaspora in London.
By Ion Paciu, photographer