Laetitia Vançon’s photograph of the last man in Dobrușa, Moldova (July 2019)

Photographer Laetitia Vançon took a picture in July 2019 of Grisa, the sole remaining resident of Dobrușa, a village in rural Moldova that no longer exists; Vançon wrote he was 65 at the time. Vançon said Dobrușa had a population of about 200 thirty years earlier and was typical of settlements across the country after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

She wrote that when Grisa moved there in 2000 to start a sheep farm the population had declined to 70. A few months before Vançon made the photograph, she wrote, the only other remaining residents — a couple in their 40s — were murdered by a farmer from a neighbouring village; their half-naked bodies were found on the ground and they had been beaten to death.

After that incident, Vançon wrote, Grisa told her he no longer felt safe living alone and was thinking about moving to a bigger village. Vançon described Grisa’s daily life: he kept turkeys, geese, chickens, pigeons, bees and about 120 ducks, many visible in the picture; his day began at 4am, and she wrote that he offered her coffee and then presented a glass of wine.

She wrote he tended his animals, picked vegetables, collected honey he sold at a local market, and made food for himself, living what she called a very simple life.

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