[fig. M] brings Romanian photography’s defining figures into view through a series of photobooks, shaping a collective portrait of contemporary voices.

Cosmin Bumbut (b. 1968, Baia Mare) is a Romanian photographer whose work spans more than three decades, from the post-communist transformation of the 1990s to some of the most complex social realities of contemporary Romania.

He began working at the Herja mine after studying mining in Baia Mare. In the early 1990s, he moved to Bucharest, where he shifted toward visual storytelling, studying journalism before graduating in Cinematography from the National University of Theatre and Film in 1997.

For 15 years, Bumbut worked as a fashion and advertising photographer, collaborating with major Romanian brands and magazines such as Elle, Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, and Esquire. Alongside commercial work, he photographed Romania’s transition years, producing long-term personal projects about the country’s landscapes, railways, and social tensions. Some of this early work was published in Transit (Humanitas, 2002).

In the 2010s, Bumbut turned to social documentary photography, focusing on prisons and marginalized communities. He published Cuba continua (Neverending Cuba, Art Publishing House, 2012) and Bumbata (Punctum Publishing House, 2013), a photo album on everyday life inside Aiud Penitentiary. In 2015, he won the Architecture Photographer of the Year award at the Sony World Photography Awards for Camera Intima (The Intimate Room), made inside Romanian prisons.

In 2013, he moved into a motorhome with his partner, journalist Elena Stancu, and began working exclusively on long-term documentary projects exploring extreme poverty, domestic violence, marginalized Roma communities, and institutional failure. Their work was published in the narrative nonfiction book Acasa, pe drum (At Home on the Road, Humanitas, 2017). In 2016, they directed the award-winning documentary film Ultimul caldarar (The Last Kalderash), which received multiple prizes, including the Best Debut award at TIFF.

His work has been exhibited internationally, including at BOZAR Brussels (2012), the Berlin European Month of Photography (2016), and the Venice Architecture Biennale, Romanian Pavilion (2021), as well as in Romania at the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant (2024), the Cluj Art Museum (2025), and the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest (2026).

Bumbut has published several books and has received numerous awards for both photography and documentary storytelling. His work combines the precision of cinematography with the intimacy of long-term reportage, offering a rare visual archive of Romania’s recent decades.