A STORM FOR MORE THAN A MINUTE
Boryana Pandova believes that she was born a photographer, but it took getting her hands on a camera for her to realize it. Over the years, the likes of Terry Gilliam, Wim Wenders, and Agnieszka Holland have stood in front of her lens.
Boryana Pandova believes that she was born a photographer, but it took getting her hands on a camera for her to realize it. That happened around the time she was studying theater, she fell in love with the art form, and to this day her photographs somehow seem to recreate the theatrical feeling of a live encounter with a characters. For seven years now, we have been peering through her lens at images from Sofia Film Fest (SFF), where Boryana, working as the official photographer of the festival, documents the events and takes portraits of the visiting artists. Over the years, the likes of Terry Gilliam, Wim Wenders, and Agnieszka Holland have stood in front of her lens.
Her latest exhibition with curator Nadezhda Pavlova, titled Just a Minute, is at Credo Bonum Gallery until March 14, so we spoke to her about her professional career so far and we're getting ready for her Portraits from the lobby, which is the working title for the exhibition celebrating the 25th anniversary of SFF at the Synthesis gallery, as well as Secondary Raw Materials– a social-artistic project in collaboration with Punkt Workshop and Todor Karastoyanov in which photography and furniture design meet in a study of garbage.
Why did you decide to start taking photographs?
Oh, I was born a photographer, at a certain point a camera appeared in my hands and things worked out. I have been watching for as long as I can remember, and that is not going to change. The longer story is that because I was painfully shy, I figured that it would be better to become some kind of writer or photographer, so that I would not have to talk to people too much. What a misconception!
What are the craziest places your job has taken you?
I have taken pictures from the shovel of an excavator; from the roof of a water tower (as well as many other roofs); I have shot while submerged in rivers, lakes, and the sea, as well as the opposite of being submerged – from the very edge of mountains and peaks. I have made photographs while pregnant in a cave (nine hours on my feet without a break); next to a bubbling pool of molten metal; I shot on a yacht as part of the Volvo Ocean Race regatta (pregnant again); I have photographed births, people who were bleeding, flying bombs; I've shot superstars and idiotic things, and this year I found myself dangling my legs over our People's Republic from the edge of a C-27J Spartan airplane.
What's a piece of professional advice you have received and would pass on?
"What you call difficult, couldn't it also be really interesting!?" I wish I had known to apply it a long time ago, but I only got it recently. Since then, I try not to stray too far from it and even think of it as having some extra exclamation points at the end.
Who are some of the women in photography who have made a lasting impression on you?
Patti Smith through her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. A story of resistance. And not just that. She is full of real things. Nadezhda Pavlova – a curator with whom I have the pleasure of working on two projects at the moment. Nadezhda is an attentive listener and endlessly curious researcher. She has the rare quality of being a professional who is also playful – her special recipe is to turn projects into a spatial-sculptural adventure in which (like in a game) you discover and build meaning. Susan Sontag – the sharpened pencil stuck in the heart of photography – charged with her power to change, build, and destroy. And the exceptional Berenice Abbott.
You meet many interesting people through your work – what are some of your most exciting stories?
In 2016, I had been shooting for SFF for two years. One day I found out that the special guest that year would be Terry Gilliam, and I stopped being able to sleep. My head was going to explode, because Terry Gilliam was going to be there and I was only supposed to take some very regular photos to document the event. I was aware that his program was pre-scheduled to the very last minute and there was no chance of stealing him for a few hours. Well, I couldn't stand it, and at some indecent midnight hour I started explaining to Svetla Damyanova from the press department how great it would be for the festival to start accumulating an archive with studio portraits of its special guests.
Apparently I was very convincing, because that has become our tradition ever since. It's a crazy tradition, we build an improvised studio, usually in the lobby of the House of Cinema, and "catch" our guests for 5-10 minutes before they enter their scheduled event. It is not easy at all, because you do not have the chance to meet, present your idea, or rearrange the light if you notice that it's not set up in the best way. No matter how much you prepare in advance, you don't know if the person on the other side is ready to go with your flow and how far they'll follow you. For Terry Gilliam I had the idea to include a child's hands doing whatever they wanted to his face. This proposal really stressed out the director of SFF Stefan Kitanov-Kita and the team. I don't know how I managed to present my idea, but he rolled over. At my signal, five children jumped out of nowhere and attacked him. There was so much laughter! The mood skyrocketed and the photos turned out great! This is not always the case.
There was also a lot of excitement with Wim Wenders (because I like him)! I managed to drop a huge table on my foot right when I started taking the pictures. My shoe turned into a scene from a Tarantino movie, but there was no time to make a fuss about some bloodbath. I can hardly remember how the shooting went, except that Mr. Wenders turned out to be very nice and very, very tall! I barely got him into the frame. Almost every portrait is wrapped up in a story, and we end up collecting interesting memories.
In February, your solo exhibition Just a Minute opened. The project has a very cinematic feeling. What can a photograph say about a minute that a video cannot?
Video, cinema, literature, music, and so on can take the time to unfold and penetrate deep into the sluice gates of the senses. Once it becomes fact, a photograph remains static – even if you spend hours looking at it. How it can hold our attention and keep speaking to us is a question we can ponder for a long time. If I have managed to evoke that feeling, that's a compliment!
You can find out more about Boryana Pandova's work on instagram.сom/b_pandova