ROSIA Montana, or Verespatak, is a small Romanian village that has come to stand for the environmentalists' and local patriots' fight against giant corporations. In the territory a Canadian company wishes to mine precious metals and would, some locals say, destroy the residence of the community as well as nature. Romanian photographer Andreea Anca Strauss has gone to Rosia Montana and recorded the days of a community that has become sharply divided by the question of the proposed investment. Gold has been mined at Rosia Montana, in the Apuseni mountains of west-central Romania, since pre-historic times. The area's riches attracted several foreign powers, starting off with the Romans. These powers carried off the precious metals: gold and silver to Rome, Vienna, Budapest, and Berlin, but always left behind enough to enable Rosia Montana to survive. The new kid on the block is a rather powerful one, the Rosia Montana Gold Corporation (RMGC), a joint venture between a Romanian and a Canadian state owned company, the latter having an 80% stake. RMGC proposes lucrative deals to locals stricken by extreme poverty to sell off their houses to give place to the open-cast mine. In this Romanian Far West, the Romanian-Hungarian-German population is bitterly divided on the issue of giving up their homes for money or sticking to the land of their ancestors. The question is not easy to answer in a village that has known immense poverty and unemployment, and where houses have recently been sold for €100,000. The actions of Alburnus Maior, a local protest group, seem to have been effective in so far as only 3% of the people have sold out. Exhibited in a lovely stained glass workshop in downtown Pest, Anca Strauss's photos show snow-covered streets, cemeteries and pub scenes, but the pictures are never peaceful. The depression, poverty and desperation is tangible in the shots, as is the tension: the main square that has seen a number of meetings of both pro-miners and protesters is no longer the quiet gathering place of friendly locals. The pictures bring home the dilemma of poor people living in a once spectacular village that is pictured from afar in a one cloudy shot.