Playing Games Around the World by Simple-T

I was born and raised in Bucharest, Romania, at that time a communist country. My exposure to foreign art, literature, music or movies was a severely limited one, due the oppressive and authoritarian nature of the communist regime.

The state would vigorously go against those who would consume or distribute any kind of media that did not primarily serve the praising of communist ideology. Traveling into countries that did not share the same communist agenda as Romania, was strictly forbidden.

With a generation growing up isolated from any form of outside influences, one could only dream about what the rest of the world had to offer. I can remember that one of my biggest desire was to travel and explore the kind of culture that was so desperately suppressed by my own.

This dream ended up becoming reality which i am using as a fundament of my series "Playing Games" blending the beauty of nature with surreal motives. Started in 2017, this series is built upon my endless gratitude towards the freedom i have been gifted, and as a reminder that locations like the one's displayed in my works, as fantastical as they may seem, do exist and are to be preserved for generations to come. Disguised as Superman, astronauts, divers, cheerleader, or dressed in traditional Korean clothes, my little figures who decorate the landscape, are always ready to win the hearts of the viewer, highlight nature as an unbelievably beautiful backdrop.

Piniata © Tabita Pietsch

All images from this series, were taken in nature while traveling through Iceland, USA, Jordan and Turkey
All props & costumes have been bought in Germany and were carried to the shooting locations.
The protagonists are real and not inserted with photoshop.
More images from the series can be see on my website.

Golf © Tabita Pietsch

Tabita Pietsch
International award-winning photographer based in Nürnberg, Germany. Born in Bucharest, Romania, she started Fine Art Photography in 2010 and has already been recognized internationally, being featured in numerous media worldwide: The Guardian UK, SaatchiArt , The Cut NY, Time Out UK, Aesthetica Magazine, British Journal of Photography, Daily Mail, Open Walls Arles, Hyperallergic NY.

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in New York, Barcelona, London, Rome, Firenze, Sydney and Paris.The focus of her work are people, landscapes and stagings. Tabea shoots almost exclusively with natural daylight.

My Images manifested my feelings, dreams, experiences and encounters.

Tabita Pietsch's Website
Tabita Pietsch on Instagram

Superman with Camels © Tabita Pietsch

Drummer © Tabita Pietsch

Mickey © Tabita Pietsch

Play Together © Tabita Pietsch

Rosa Beach © Tabita Pietsch

Say Hi © Tabita Pietsch

Too Hot to Get Angry © Tabita Pietsch

Walk with Crocodile © Tabita Pietsch

Fishing © Tabita Pietsch

Virginia Hanusik: Into the Quiet and the Light

By Virginia Hanusik

Publisher : Columbia Books on Architecture and the City

2024 | 184 pages

In South Louisiana, where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico, water―and the history of controlling it―is omnipresent. Into the Quiet and the Light: Water, Life, and Land Loss in South Louisiana glimpses the vulnerabilities and possibilities of living on the water during an ongoing climate catastrophe and the fallout of the fossil fuel industry―past, present, and future. The book sustains our physical, mental, and emotional connections to these landscapes through a collection of photographs by Virginia Hanusik. Framing the architecture and infrastructure of South Louisiana with both distance and intimacy, introspection and expansiveness, this work engages new memories, microhistories, anecdotes, and insights from scholars, artists, activists, and practitioners working in the region. Unfolding alongside and in dialogue with Hanusik’s photographs, these reflections soberly and hopefully populate images of South Louisiana’s built and natural environments, opening up multiple pathways that defy singularity and complicate the disaster-oriented imagery often associated with the region and its people. In staging these meditations on water, life, and land loss, this book invites readers to join both Hanusik and the contributors in reading multiplicity into South Louisiana’s water-ruled landscapes.

With texts from Richie Blink, Imani Jacqueline Brown, Jessica Dandridge, Rebecca Elliott, Michael Esealuka, T. Mayheart Dardar, Billy Fleming, Andy Horowitz, Arthur Johnson, Louis Michot, Nini Nguyen, Kate Orff, Jessi Parfait, Amy Stelly, Jonathan Tate, Aaron Turner, and John Verdin.

Rawsht Twana: Twana’s Box

By Rawsht Twana

Publisher : Fraglich Publishing

2024 | 252 pages

Twana’s Box' can be described in many ways: a journey through a photographer’s rare archive, documenting the Kurdistan region of Iraq from 1974–1992; a son’s quest to find his lost father, who was murdered by a military regime; a young man’s way to piece together the fragments of a scattered family in a scattered culture; the becoming of a photographer who, through the stories of others, starts to understand his own identity in times of war. 'Twana’s Box' is not only the photo book that holds a selection of Twana Abdullah’s archive; it is a unique insight into a time and place in a region that has since completely transformed. Rawsht has spent years piecing together his father’s negatives and stories. His archival work inspired him to become a photographer himself, working for Metrography – the first independent Iraqi photo agency – before immigrating to Europe. ills colour & bw, 21 x 27 cm, hb, Kurdish/Arabic/English

Akinbode Akinbiyi: Being, Seeing, Wandering

By Akinbode Akinbiyi

Publisher : Spector Books

2024 | 252 pages

Taken across Europe and Africa, Akinbiyi’s images of everyday city life muse on the sociopolitical labyrinths of urban society

Whether in Bamako, Berlin, London, Lagos or Durban, British photographer Akinbode Akinbiyi (born 1946) creates black-and-white street scenes that function as visual metaphors, ruminating on cultural change, social exclusion and colonialism’s effect on urban planning.

Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm

By Grace Wales Bonner

Publisher : The Museum of Modern Art, New York

2024 | 184 pages

A deeply personal meditation on and around modern Black expression, curated by the acclaimed London-based designer
This volume, Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm―Visions of Sound and Spirit in the MoMA Collection, is an artist’s book created by the acclaimed London-based designer Grace Wales Bonner as “an archive of soulful expression.” Through an extraordinary selection of nearly 80 works from The Museum of Modern Art’s collection and archives, this unique volume draws multisensory connections between pictures and poems, music and performance, hearing and touch, gestures and vibrations, and bodies in motion. Photographs, scores and films by artists such as Dawoud Bey, Mark Bradford, Roy DeCarava, Lee Friedlander, David Hammons, Glenn Ligon, Steve McQueen, Lorna Simpson and Ming Smith, among others, are juxtaposed with signal texts by Black authors spanning the past century, including Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, June Jordan, Robin Coste Lewis, Ishmael Reed, Greg Tate, Jean Toomer, Quincy Troupe and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Artist’s Choice: Grace Wales Bonner―Spirit Movers, this resplendent publication is a deeply personal meditation on and around modern Black expression that echoes Wales Bonner’s own vibrant, virtuosic designs.

Playing Games Around the World by Simple-T

Tabita Pietsch's Website

Selected Books