A THREAD THROUGH GENERATIONS
(15th of August in Maramures – Romania)
In August 2026, my wife and I spontaneously set off on a 4x4 road trip to Maramureș, in northern Romania. We were drawn by the region’s traditional villages, wooden churches and rural culture, as well as its proximity to our home in Poland and its endless possibilities for off-road travel, perfect for our Jeep Wrangler and rooftop tent.
While exploring the region, we learned from a Romanian woman working in one of these old wooden churches about the celebrations taking place on August 15th, the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. She told us that people from the surrounding villages would gather that morning at a monastery in the mountains.
A destination suddenly became a story. I took my camera and went to see what would happen.
By the time we arrived, people were already gathering around the monastery. Families came dressed in their traditional clothes, children followed their parents through the courtyard, and the wooden church stood at the centre of it all.
I had come without really knowing what to expect. At first, I simply watched and tried to understand the rhythm of the celebration.
Inside, everything was quieter. Most of the ceremony was taking place outside, where priests and nuns led prayers and songs that were heard through large speakers. Inside the church, almost empty, the wooden walls were covered with centuries-old religious paintings, and the atmosphere was completely different from the gathering outside.
For many of the people I was photographing, this was not simply a celebration or a display of tradition. It was first and foremost an act of faith.
Outside again, I became increasingly drawn to the people rather than the ceremony itself. What interested me was the way different generations occupied the same space.
Elderly women sat alongside younger families. Children watched what their parents were doing, dressed in clothes that seemed to belong to another time. Some were clearly participating in rituals they were still learning to understand.
The traditional clothes were impossible to overlook. They were colourful, elaborate and somehow connected to the identity of the people wearing them. But the longer I stayed, the less I saw them as symbols of a distant past.
Instead, I saw tradition being lived naturally, across generations. Older women were standing alongside mothers and children, while the youngest were simply playing, watching and growing up surrounded by it. Tradition seemed to survive not by being preserved, but by being passed on as part of everyday life.
And this was perhaps what struck me most throughout the day: how naturally the old and the new existed side by side.
The traditional clothing, the wooden church and the religious rituals belonged to a world that felt centuries old. Yet around them were cars, phones, modern clothes, children growing up in a very different Romania, and all the ordinary interactions of contemporary life.
As the religious part of the day gave way to a more informal gathering, the atmosphere changed. People talked, laughed, drank together and simply spent time with one another.
The celebration was not only about religion. It was also a moment for the community to come together.
By the end of the day, I found myself thinking less about the ceremony itself and more about what it represented.
Traditions like these survive because they are repeated, shared and passed on. Children learn by watching their parents. Families return year after year, and older generations carry memories that younger ones slowly inherit.
See the full photographic reportage from the celebration in my Romania Gallery HERE.