Scent of a Bucharest Woman

MARIETA DALLA (WINTER 1990)
LOVE IS A SENSORY PERCEPTION

If I had to chose my favorite photograph of Marieta, it would likely be this one. Taken during the winter of 1990 prior to one of our first dates, I was awestruck by the dramatic contrast between natural beauty and elegance….versus the stark backdrop of cold, dark, and gray Bucharest in the background with its cracked walls, bleakness of color, and perpetual boredom of sameness.

Even the smells were of contrast. Marieta’s favorite perfume has always been Armani, and while a whiff of that smell 34 years later still triggers fond memories of “scent of a woman,” I can never dispel the gut-wrenching nausea outside of diesel fuel floating in the air and foggish clouds of coal dust suffocating the city in the dank Bucharest nightfall. Beauty and the beast. Love is a sensory perception.

This was taken one late afternoon from the balcony of her apartment block in central Bucharest looking down on the street below. The timing is also memorable as the 1989 Romanian Revolution had taken place just months earlier. Many things were about to change throughout Romania and Eastern Europe at that time, just as our own lives would be different from this point forward.

Photographs not only capture unique moments in time. They also preserve memories. And those memories, if not shared, will be lost forever. Photographs and memories are the way we hold onto the things we love, preserve who we are, and protect the people we never want to lose.