Diana Boariu: From Behind the Lens to Between the Lines |CVLTARTES

Diana Boariu photographed long before she wrote. Her own body, especially, she looked at it the way you’d look at a photo that hadn’t developed yet, something she didn’t quite recognize. She writes only at night, because that’s the one hour she can’t hide from herself.

There’s one poem she fought hard for, “Silence”, not technically, but because she had to decide if she was ready to be that exposed. The rest is simpler to tell: a camera, ten years, a photo of one solitary tree on a mountain, and the conviction that photography and poetry are, underneath it, doing the same thing.

You trained as a photographer before this book existed as poems. Do you think in images first, or does language get there before the picture does?

I definitely think in images first. My whole life has been about images, from drawings to photography, to even imagining myself as a writer. I see moments through a specific frame, a certain light, or a quiet, almost invisible detail, like a feather struck by the rays of the dawn through a window.

My brain just captures the scene before I even have the words for it. But a photograph can be incredibly silent, and sometimes that silence can either mean everything or nothing much to the viewer. That is where language comes in. It’s the moment when I want people to see exactly what I see, but through their own experiences.

I like to keep my writing simple, raw, and direct, because I want to preserve that unpolished feeling of a snapshot. I want it to feel vulnerable. So yes, the picture always gets there first, but the words are what finally allow the image to be truly seen.”

“Scriu doar noaptea,” what does night give you that daylight takes away?

Night gives me a very specific kind of silence. It is not always calm, but it is raw and real enough that you cannot run from yourself. Daylight demands a filter, a posture, and a way to function. It makes everything loud and fast, taking away that quiet, terrifying honesty.

When the sun goes down, all of that stops. I light a scented candle, make a cup of tea, and sit down in that cozy isolation. Once the daily responsibilities and external noise fade, I finally have the room to process things and dig deep. That is when the notebook opens.

Your poems keep circling back to the body not recognizing itself. Is that a wound, or is it more like a technical problem, a lens that’s slightly out of focus?

I wouldn’t say it’s a wound, nor is it just an out-of-focus lens. It is more like looking at yourself with extreme, cold objectivity.

I have always been deeply self-aware of my body. When radical changes happen, I do not process them emotionally right away. I notice them almost like a technical shift, observing my own reflection and realizing that something is off. The disconnect comes from that sharp awareness. You look at your physical form, you register every difference, and for a moment your mind and your body are standing in two different rooms.

You’ve described your process elsewhere in terms of exposure and developing, like a photograph taking time to surface. Do you write a poem in one sitting, or does it develop the way a print does, over several passes?

For me, it is the same instinct at work. Art is always half observation, half skill. When I shoot, that instinct turns outward to capture the light and the surface of the world. Writing is that same instinct turning inward, digging deep to map my mind and heart. Taking a photo feels like breathing in, and writing is like breathing out.

Because of this, I often scribble random thoughts or quick observations as they hit me during the day, like taking mental snapshots. But when I finally sit down and get into the mood to write, leaving everything else behind, the poem usually comes out in one sitting. The exposure happens in real time, and the image surfaces all at once. Later on, those poems might undergo small adjustments before publication, once I go through them with my mentor, but the core stays intact.

Is there a poem in this book you fought with the longest, one that resisted being developed?

Yes, there is one. It is called Silence, and it was actually one of the first poems I wrote for this book.

The struggle with it was not technical, but emotional. It made me hesitate for a long time. I kept asking myself if I was ready to be that vulnerable, if it was actually safe to put those exact words out into the world for anyone to read. I was terrified of how the people close to me, the ones who would inevitably recognize themselves in it, would react. In the end, letting it surface was a matter of courage rather than editing.

Photography usually asks you to freeze a moment. Poetry asks you to hold a feeling open. How do you reconcile a medium built on stillness with one built on duration?

I do not actually see them as conflicting mediums. Both are timeless.

With photography, you freeze a moment, but if you capture it properly, that single frame holds an entire story that never really ends. It stays alive every time someone looks at it. Poetry does the exact same thing with an emotion. Raw, honest poetry captures a split second of clarity and keeps it open so that anyone who has been through the same thing can step inside it. It shows them they are not alone.

So, for me, there is nothing to reconcile. Both photography and writing are just ways of keeping a moment from disappearing.

Some of your lines read like captions stripped of their photographs, precise, almost withheld. Is that restraint deliberate, or is it just how the images arrive?

It is completely deliberate. I use that restraint to control the rhythm of the text, forcing a pause exactly where it needs to be so the core message hits properly.

I like the idea that a single line can detach itself from the poem and still carry its full weight. When you strip away the extra words, the line becomes a quote on its own, something that can survive outside its original context and mean something just as sharp to whoever reads it. It is about creating maximum impact with the absolute minimum amount of noise.

If you had to choose one photograph you’ve taken that best explains this book, not illustrates it, explains it, what would it be, and why?

It would be a photograph of a single tree, taken in a remote mountain village with barely any residents.

I took it near a monastery where I went to retreat for two days one autumn. At that moment, I genuinely felt that was the absolute last place left where I could pull myself back together. The tree itself is old, weathered, and completely solitary against the sky, but it is still standing.

That image does not just illustrate a scene; it explains the core of this book. It captures that exact threshold between isolation and resilience, the feeling of being stripped down to the bare minimum, in the middle of nowhere, yet managing to stay rooted.

What’s the difference between the Diana who studied photography at UAD Cluj and the Diana who’s now debuting as a poet? Or is there no difference at all?

There is a huge difference.

The Diana at UAD was just starting to figure out adulthood, moving through the world with a quiet uncertainty, still looking for her place and seeing everything through a raw, unrefined lens.

The Diana debuting today is studying psychology out of a genuine desire to understand what moves us from within. Ten years of life have settled, bringing a deeper clarity. I am far more present now, more aware of my own emotions and attentive to the people around me. There is an anchored confidence in who I am today, a calm certainty that I can achieve whatever I set my mind to, built on every lesson life taught me along the way.

What are you working on next? More poems, more images, or are you done separating the two?

I always have too many plans at once.

Right now, I am working on a new poetry collection, but I also want to write an illustrated children’s book, and eventually, a novel. Beyond writing, I am building a personal platform, a space of my own where my photography, graphic art, and books can live together.

I am not done separating the mediums, nor am I forcing them together. They just continue to develop side by side, as they always have. At their core, they speak the same language, and the thread that holds them together is simply me.