Talented young photographer Alex Beldea uses camera to observe people, facing life changes and challenges, in the UK and in his native town, Petrosani.
The Huddersfield student has won appreciation in a respected international competition.
Alex, aged 22, already has experience in commercial photography, achieved during a 12-month partnership with an agency based in Leeds, and launched as a freelancer. He developed a portfolio of pictures blending both social and artistic images.
He is from Petrosani , Valea Jiului which has been a coal mining area for decades. As some of the mines are being shut down, growing insecure future lies ahead pitmen.
Throughout several months, Alex paid visits to Romania and photographed the miners and their surroundings, and succeeded to build up a portfolio of more than 100 pictures depicting the final stages of mining in Paroseni, Petrila and Uricani.
He chose six of the pictures and recorded them for the 2014 International Photography Awards. Alex’s selection earned him an honorable mention in the Non-Professional, Photo Essay and Feature Story category.
‘One of my goals was to raise the level of sympathy and understanding for the Romanian miners,’ he said.
In a mix of portraits, industrial landscapes and sequences captured at the entrance and at the exit of the mines, the Last Shift project is intended to be a refreshing of the miners’ image, but also a documentation of the last months of mining activity and of the last miners who are going in the underground of the Paro?eni, Petrila and Uricani coal mines.