More than 30 rare photographs by Constantin Brancusi are on public view in Targu Jiu for the first time, in an exhibition staged as part of the celebrations marking the Brancusi Year. The show gathers a body of photographic work by the sculptor that Romanian audiences have never before seen displayed in the city where his best-known monuments stand.

The exhibition takes its place within the wider national programme dedicated to Brancusi, and its location carries symbolic weight. Targu Jiu is home to the sculptor's celebrated outdoor ensemble — the Endless Column, the Gate of the Kiss and the Table of Silence — and the city has long served as the principal Romanian site for engaging with his legacy. Showing his photographs here, for the first time, shifts attention from the monumental works in public space to the intimate, studio-scale practice behind them.

Brancusi's activity as a photographer remains less familiar to the general public than his sculpture, yet it forms a coherent part of his oeuvre. The photographs on display are described by the organisers as rare images that document both his working environment and his way of seeing. For a sculptor who obsessively controlled the presentation of his work — photographing his pieces himself, arranging them in relation to light, pedestals and studio walls — the camera functioned as an instrument of authorship rather than mere record.

That double character, part document and part composition, gives the Targu Jiu presentation its interest. The more than 30 photographs on view offer visitors a rare opportunity to trace how Brancusi translated his sculptural thinking into the two-dimensional frame, and how the studio itself became a subject in his work.

Why does this exhibition matter now?

The timing is not incidental. The Brancusi Year frames the photographer-sculptor's output within a broader institutional reassessment of his legacy, bringing lesser-known facets of his practice before a public audience. A first-time exhibition in Targu Jiu signals that the city's engagement with Brancusi now extends beyond the monumental ensemble toward the full range of his creative production.

For visitors, the show's appeal lies in scale and intimacy: a focused selection of just over 30 photographs, presented in the city most closely identified with the artist's name.

The exhibition stands as part of the continuing programme of the Brancusi Year, through which Romanian institutions are expected to keep surfacing further materials from the sculptor's archive and studio practice.