𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝗢𝘃𝗶𝗱𝗶𝘂 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗮𝗿𝘂

 

Ovidiu Selaru is a 43-year-old Romanian street and documentary photographer based between London and Bucharest, known for his humanistic approach to photography and his emotional way of documenting people and everyday life.

 

For nearly two decades, he has lived and worked in London — a city that became central to both his life and photographic identity. Over the last sixteen years, he has photographed London extensively, building a long-term visual archive focused on human presence, emotion, urban culture, and the fragile theatre of life unfolding on the streets. This body of work later became his acclaimed book, London in Frames.

 

Born and raised in northern Romania in a family of artists, Ovidiu grew up surrounded by drawing, painting, and visual expression. Watching his father create art by hand deeply influenced the way he understands storytelling, atmosphere, and emotion today. Photography became his own language for continuing that artistic legacy.

His work is centred around people. Faces, gestures, emotion, silence, tension, humour, intimacy, solitude, and the invisible relationship between individuals and the cities they inhabit form the foundation of his visual language. Rather than focusing on geometry, shadows, or aesthetic perfection alone, his photography is driven by human connection, instinct, proximity, and layered moments that feel emotionally alive.

 

Ovidiu photographs instinctively and often works from inside the scene itself, creating immersive images that place the viewer directly into the rhythm and unpredictability of real life. His approach to street and documentary photography is deeply personal — less about observing from a distance and more about feeling present inside the moment.

Over the years, his work has been featured internationally in Vogue, LFI Magazine, Photoshop Magazine, and multiple exhibitions and publications around the world.

He is currently working on Europe In Between, a long-term documentary project documenting contemporary Europe through people, identity, urban life, and the emotional atmosphere of cities across the continent.

 

For Ovidiu, photography is not about creating perfect images. It is about preserving human moments before they disappear forever.

 

“Photography is not made to impress others. Photography is made to discover yourself.”

 

— Quote by Ovidiu Selaru