At the threshing machine, Runcu, Gorj, 1930

Iosif Berman · 1930

Taken home, the grain was passed by car housed under a shed in the household yard. The image captures the sustained activity of several people who feed with the threshing nights. Through the dust produced by the chaff resulting from the threshing we lay a wagon with straw to which two horses are hung. The author of the photo is Iosif Berman (1892-1941), journalist and official photographer of the Royal Court. He accompanied Professor Gusti’s teams in almost all the village monography campaigns. One of his great qualities was the capture of the snapshots of the village life. On the initiative and under the direction of Professor Dimitrie Gusti from 29 June to 18 August 1930, a team of 60 monographers methodically and analytically researched all areas of his life - cosmological, biological, psychological, historical, economic, spiritual, political-administrative, at Runcu, Gorj, village (documentary attestation in 1486) situated at the foothills of the Vâcan Mountains in Sohodolului Gorge. Following this thorough investigation we defined the Romanian concepts about the theory and technique of sociological monography that in the coming years began to be known and applied also by researchers from other countries in Europe. Photography, cacherata on a cardboard sheet, with the humorous information: region, locality, title (in Romanian, French, German), date, photographer.