Salepar
The Salep Salesman
Ionescu takes a photo of a strolling tradesman, the
salepar (salepgiu), a person who sells salep, an
oriental drink prepared with the fecula of the salep
plant, water and honey*.
For us, the photography means exotism (the drink
itself, not just the recipients and the clothes). In
Ionescu’s world, the salepar is an ordinary
character. We meet him on the streets, at the Mosi,
at the market. Spaces marked by the presence of the
crowd and by gestures of the collective consuming:
salep, braga, lemonade, baked chestnuts, pretzels,
sugarwool on sticks, ice-cream, etc., all these are
snack – desert foods (almost all of them are sweet),
whose role is not feeding (at most maybe they can
revigorate, cooling), but producing pleasure (the
social leveling also acts in the pleasurable food
area: while some choose sugar wool on stick others
choose Suchard chocolate). The important thing is
the fact that a private gesture, like that of
eating, is made in the street, a fact that comes to
support the theory that in the Bucharest between the
two world wars the public spaces are opened to
values that belong to the private space.
The area of the pleasurable foods interferes with
the crowd area, the leisure, walking and resting
area. The people from the inter-war Bucharest have
time to stop, admire, buy, enjoy.
*
The starch flour extracted from the salep plant was
also used as fortifying food.
