The color of hay : the peasants of Maramureș

Motivated by the pictures in The Color of Hay, we spent two weeks living with one of the families Kathleen photographed in Maramures. The Color of Hay accurately portrays the character of the people and the flavor of the region. Even though we came back with hundreds of our own photographs, The Color of Hay sits on our coffee table to show to our friends. Kathleen has done a great service in accurately capturing and preserving a disappearing way of life.    Joel & Carole, Tucson, AZ

Romania is a stunningly beautiful country, with a large rural population notable for both warmth and humor. If you aren't able to visit Romania yourself, this book is the next best thing. The photography is gorgeous, and truly captures the culture and a traditional way of life that, though changing, has been preserved into modern times. Highly recommended!

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Kathleen Laraia’s book, Color of Hay, is magnificent in evoking the beauty and spirit of Maramures, often called the Tibet of Europe for its remoteness from modern life.  As a nearby Peace Corps volunteer during the time Kathleen and her husband Henry were living in Sirb, I witnessed their year with the Berci Family, who also became my friends.  Their total absorption in the lives of the villagers, and the villagers’  acceptance of Kathleen and Henry, allowed them to witness and record through Kathleen’s camera and Henry’s words, a vanishing way of life in Maramures.  In a few years color TVs, shiny new furniture and Western dress will have replaced the traditions that are captured so superbly in Kathleen’s book.

Based on her yearlong photographic projects in Romania (2000-2001, and 2002-2003), Kathleen Laraia McLaughlin’s photo reportage entitled “The Color of Hay” offers a visual exploration of the daily life, art, and communal traditions of peasants in Northern Transylvania (the Maramuresh region) and other parts of Romania. .Kathleen’s photographic work, originally displayed at the Anderson Gallery in Richmond, has been in the meantime featured in other exhibitions in New York, Washington DC, San Francisco, Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca (Romania), Las Vegas, and Green Bay, Wisconsin – to mention only her solo exhibitions – , and has illustrated the covers of The Time Magazine and Lens Work. The commentary that accompanies the illustrations, written by H. Woods McLaughlin, expands the discussion, adding an intercultural dimension to the book.

What I found impressive in Ms. McLaughlin’s creative projects is not only the quality and subtlety of her photographic work, but also the perceptive thematic framework that she wove around it. “The Color of Hay” explores the various ways in which people in a traditional culture relate to their environment, their past and present, and to each other, connecting work and pleasure, body and spirit, old and young, into a complex web of relationships. Having spent more than a year among villagers in Northern Romania, Ms. McLaughlin managed to develop an intercultural understanding that helped not only her research and artistic work but also the dialogue between cultures as geographically remote as those of the US and Maramuresh.

Ms. McLaughlin’s work is both recuperative, trying to capture cultural manifestations on the wane, but also explorative, offering us insights into alternative ways of relating to one’s environment and to each other. What she proposes is not a nostalgic capturing of a folk culture that is dying out in its battle with technological modernity, but a recording of a communal mode of life and experience of connectedness that can prove relevant for us in the West. “The Color of Hay” bridges past and present, East and West, giving us a better sense of who we are and where we come from. With this work, and other projects she is currently involved in, Ms. McLaughlin has established herself as an original photographer, scholar, and mediator between cultures.