Family. Life.

Down With Light

Manpreet Romana

Danish School of Media and Journalism

Gare De Nord, Bucharest, Romania, 2014: Deep below the center of the city of Bucharest, lies something more than brick and mortar. It simultaneously marks survival and death. Since Romania's communist reign dating back to 1966, individuals who endured the antiabortion mandate lead unique lives. In 1989, when communism fell, they retreated into the city's tunnels. Here, they make a living by trading scraps for basic amenities, provided by a man they call Bruce Lee. The tunnel is home to the children of a dark age. These children grew, and as parents, they bore another generation that lives and breathes in the same squalor. Hepatitis is rampant, unclean needles has led to the spread of HIV, and tuberculosis seems like a seasonal bug in comparison. They are the devil's rejects in such light, or the lack thereof. Within the tunnel's walls, they depend on substances to keep them going. They keep a sense of community alive despite all disparities. It is a family that I met, and yet, there is no saying how many members this family has or how long they will, or can, hold against the tide of changing time and their own demons.
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  • A homeless man steps into the opening on the snowed pavement as he enters the tunnel opposite the main station in Bucharest, Romania. A group of homeless drug addicts rejected by society have found a home in the tunnel through which the city's heating pipes run.

  • Ramona, 33, center left, and her daughter, Andreea, 8, center right, stand with other homeless residents inside the tunnel.

  • Bruce Lee, 42, rests on his bed in the tunnel. To reach his sleeping quarters you have to crawl through a narrow passage in the tunnel.

  • Bruce Lee hugs Andreea while Pistea Andrei, 28, left, sniffs a silver paint called Aurolac in a room that is part of a maze of rooms they call the barracks.

  • Bobby holds the needle between his teeth as he experinces a fit after injecting himself with a synthetic drug in the tunnel.

  • One of the tunnel's residents Santoo Beluca, 24, sleeps. On the left lie wires that they collect from around the city so they can extract copper and sell it as scrap metal.

  • Stefan Victor Stanciu, 16, left, and Nicolae Anghelese, 17, right, are growing up in a orphanage. They show off their bodies in the tunnel.

  • A view of a passage in the tunnel as it's illuminated by a flashlight. The residents steal electricity from public lighting to light the tunnel.

  • Andreea lives in the tunnel with her mother. She sleeps in a room in the barracks.

  • Ionescu Sandu sniffs Aurolac to get high.

  • Bruce Lee enters the tunnel as other residents of the tunnel look on.

  • Ramona smokes a ciggarette as she rests inside the tunnel.

  • Homeless residents of the tunnel inject synthetic drugs in a room in the barracks.

  • In Bucharest, a group of homeless drug addicts rejected by society have found a home in the tunnel through which the city's heating pipes run.

  • Ramona kisses Andreea's feet while she sleeps inside the tunnel in Bucharest.

  • Fierone Cristina, 27, a resident of the tunnel, injects a synthetic drug in her neck with the help of a pocket makeup mirror.

  • Bruce Lee, left, whose real name is Hora Florin, kisses his girlfriend, Leila Aurelia Mustafa, 23, in a room in the barracks. Bruce Lee helped build the barracks behind a building opposite the tunnel. Some of them sleep there when it gets too hot inside the tunnel.

  • Bruce Lee has a cross tattooed on his back. Everyone calls him "father."

  • Fierone sleeps inside the tunnel.

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