Exhibition in Plovdiv, Bulgaria
Exhibition at Bogdania, Bucharest
Exhibition in Iași, Romania
Beyond Yesterday – An Anthropological Journey through the Balkans in the Footsteps of the Manakia Brothers, 1900
A visual anthropology project by Cătălin D. Constantin
Opening: Saturday, 25 October 2025, at 1:00 p.m.
Venue: Dumitru I. Grumăzescu Galleries, 24 Alexandru Lăpușneanu Street, Iași, Romania
The Municipality of Iași and Peter Pan ART are pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition “Beyond Yesterday. An Anthropological Journey through the Balkans in the Footsteps of the Manakia Brothers, 1900”, a visual anthropology project by Cătălin D. Constantin. The opening event will take place on Saturday, 25 October 2025, at 1:00 p.m., at the Dumitru I. Grumăzescu Galleries, as an open dialogue with the author.
At the turn of the 20th century, brothers Ianaki and Milton Manakia documented, through their photographs, the life of Vlach communities in Macedonia and Epirus. More than a century later, Cătălin D. Constantin retraced the Manakia brothers’ route, re-creating the same scenes from the same vantage points. The exhibition “Beyond Yesterday” brings together historical photographs from the archives of the Romanian Peasant Museum and contemporary images taken by the author, forming a visual dialogue about cultural memory, identity, and the profound transformations of the Balkan world.
“I was not interested merely in re-creating the old photographs with the same framing. It was rather a way of entering the isolated communities of the Balkans, of seeing their way of life — today, not yesterday. How much have the Balkans changed in the past hundred years?
This is the question that concerns me. Photography has proven to be an exceptionally useful tool for field research — a road leading toward an understanding of how small worlds and isolated communities transform under the pressure of history. It is, anthropologically speaking, a way of describing the course of our own history, here, at home, in the Balkans.” (Cătălin D. Constantin)
The project is part of a broader series of visual research dedicated to reconstructing the Balkan cultural heritage of the early 20th century. The exhibition has previously been presented in Greece, in Metsovo and Ioannina — where the Manakia brothers opened their first photographic studio — in Bitola and at the National Gallery in Skopje (Republic of North Macedonia), in Korçë (Albania), and at the Romanian Peasant Museum in Bucharest.
It will continue its itinerary later this year in Istanbul and Ankara.
Cătălin D. Constantin is an anthropologist, book editor, and associate professor at the Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest. He has held exhibitions in Romania, Spain, Turkey, Bulgaria, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Poland, Greece, Albania, Ireland, Italy, North Macedonia, and Portugal.
Exhibition at National Gallery of the Republic of North Macedonia
Exhibition in Bucharest (Romania)
Exhibition in Korçë (Albania)
Exhibition in Ioannina (Greece)
Opening event: 12th April in Metsovo (Greece)
