The Unknown Soldiers of Bulgarian Photography

Archives that are undocumented or outright lost, a lack of appreciation of photography as an art, limited opportunities for professionals to pass on their knowledge or reach a wider audience, wars, emigration, lack of creative freedom during the totalitarian regime, and lack of sustainable practices and standards in the years after it fell. These are some of the problems that make it difficult for anyone to name more than two or three Bulgarian photographers from the recent, let alone more distant, past. This results in a kind of paradox: some true innovators are virtually unknown.

Gradually, the puzzle that is the history of photography in our country is starting to form a more coherent picture: each year, Synthesis Gallery in Sofia presents new names and international artists, but also introduces artists with whom even professionals in the field are little acquainted.

"These are actually some of our most successful exhibitions," says curator Nadezhda Pavlova of Synthesis Gallery, who is also working on a dissertation on the historical processes of photography in our country.

Photographer: Petar Bozhkov (1915-2003)

The dangers of a rural landscape

The module "Names in Bulgarian Photography" will soon include another name about which little is known: Petar Bozhkov (1915 - 2003). "As with most Bulgarian photographers of this generation, there is almost nothing online about him," Pavlova says.

This idea, like many others, was the result of a happy accident. At the end of 2022, one of Bozhkov's descendants donated his entire archive to the National Photographic Academy Association, including dozens of silver-gelatin photographs developed by the author himselfs, hundreds of negatives and slides.

Bozhkov, who was born in Varna and given the title of "photographer-artist," was a familiar name for professionals in the field working in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, and was appreciated by his contemporaries not only as an author and lecturer, but also as a good mentor. His life story brings us back to the changing norms and expectations for visual artists before and after communism.

Petar Bozhkov (1915-2003)

"It must be difficult for the modern photographer to imagine a time when the artistic landscape was declared a formalist artform. After 1944, photographers working in this genre were forced to orient themselves towards photojournalism if they wanted to continue practicing their profession," Pavlova recalls.

A landscape photograph could only be published if it illustrated the party's rhetoric about powerful agricultural machinery and rich socialist harvests. Thus, "photojournalism, which followed the rules of socialist realism, was seen as the only form of photographic art. Other genres were declared examples of bourgeois prejudice, and landscape photography was one of them. The connection to the land and pastoral rural landscapes were unacceptable, and their authors criticized."

Photographer: Petar Bozhkov (1915-2003)

Bozhkov became one of the few artists to work in this genre and continue the tradition of Bulgarian landscape photography. Nature played a major role in his work. "His photographs clear away superfluous details and provoke the viewer to interpret the subject in his own way."

Photographer: Petar Bozhkov (1915-2003)

He is also known for setting a precedent: in 1973, his photographs were used to illustrate a book by Pavel Matev (a communist-era poet and part of the Party's repressive apparatus). This is probably the first time photographs were used as illustrations for a literary work in this country with the photographer’s name explicitly listed.

An exhibition of Peter Bozhkov's work will take place in the second half of 2023.

Photographer: Petar Bozhkov (1915-2003)

A visual overview of the 20th century

The artists featured in the gallery's series Names in Bulgarian Photography over the past few years include Yordan Yordanov - Yuri (1940-2009), who left a highly individual and distinctive visual legacy from his travels; Georgi St. Georgiev (1881-1956) - perhaps the first Bulgarian photographer to work with nudes; and Petar Arnaudov (1899-1933).

Photographer: Georgi St. Georgiev (1881 - 1956)

The focus also includes artists active since the 1980s, such as Deyana Stamatova (1941-2001), one of the first bold experimenters in Bulgarian photography, Sonya Stankova, Antoan Bojanov, who early on worked on provocative thematic series beyond what authorities would allow, and Garo Keshishian, who last year was honored with a retrospective photo book.

Photographer: Georg Volz (1862-1917)

Some of the exhibitions have traveled around the country to great success, such as The Story of Nessebar by the architect Nikolai Popov (1914-1973), whose poetic images capture summers and winters on the Black sea in the late 60s, Manaki - History in Pictures, which brought together the work of brothers Janaki Manaki and Milton Manaki, inextricably linked to the history of the Balkans between 1898 and 1930, and The Unknown Photographer by Georg Volz (1862-1917), who documented the Third Bulgarian Kingdom and was one of the first to develop photography as a profession in this country.

Photographer: Yordan Yordanov - Yuri (1940-2009)

Find out more about events and exhibitions at Synthesis Gallery on photosynthesis.bg.