The negative on glass was made by Romulus Vuia, in 1923, in Uricani village, Hunedoara county and it presents the image of a woman dressed up in a folk costume specific to Jiu Valley, photographed in front of a wooden construction. The woman has her hair combed with a path on the middle, braided in two thick tails, wrapped under her ears, enriched with two artificial woolen tails (“pletari”), on which a “tindeu” is placed - a thick cotton towel woven in two shafts, adorned at one end with black geometric motifs and decorated with tassels on the edges. The hair and “tindeu” are fixed with glass hairpins. The Carpathian shirt, made of cloth, has a narrow collar decorated with geometric motifs and a mouth laterally placed. The shirt ornamentation, with a sober chromatic, is placed on the collar, on the sleeves and on the chest. Wide sleeves start from the collar, which have geometric patterns grouped on the shoulder in a horizontal tie (called “umeraș”), and along the sleeve, a row of embroidery is placed, followed by short rows that stop above the elbow. Long rows of seams with geometric patterns, starting from under the collar, are vertically displayed also on the shirt’s chest. “The woman’s shirt from the Jiu Valley is distinguished by its sober elegance, reinforced by the clear lines of the ornamentation arranged in well-defined fields” (Petrescu, Paul, The Romanian folk costume from Transylvania and Banat, Ed. de Stat Didactică și Pedagogică, 1959, p. 40). The woman wears a “lătițar” around her neck, made of small beads in different colors.

The negative, registered with title “Wife”, inventory no. 80, is made on a glass support, in the dry gelatin technique, having the dimensions of 9 cm x 12 cm.

Photo: the MET archive