BCR
As the most important financial group in Romania, BCR runs the largest national ATM network and has 19 business centers, 17 mobile offices, and 430 retail units across most towns of 10,000+. Altogether, the bank’s nearly 7,000-strong staff serves over 3,3 million customers nationwide.
Photography as Bridge
In 2014, BCR approached us with the concern that, as the largest Romanian bank, they struggled to create connections between their leadership staff and their retail teams on the ground. Using the all-embracing language of photography, we set off to visually document the bank’s real staff across its physical retail branches, with the objective to enable headquarters employees to vicariously immerse themselves in their coworkers’ daily life too.
Our objective was to capture, without needing any other words, the beauty of all the lives who intersect on a normal day at a bank, almost as a cross-section through society. The ambition of a young couple applying for their first apartment’s loan. The charm of a grandmother wanting to contribute to her grandchildren’s future. The nervousness of an intern on their first day at work. The multitasking of rush hour. The patience of a counselor walking customers step by step. The intimacy of a desk. The expert hands of someone who’s handled bills for decades. Even the sounds of desk chairs rolling and the smell of paperwork piles.
The resulting photographs were displayed as an exhibition inside BCR’s headquarters, offering the leadership staff a chance to directly dive into the world of their colleagues on the ground. Beyond creating a more visceral understanding between them, this internal project also provided optimal content for any future external communications too.