A photographer with a heightened curiosity about language is how Maritsa Kolcheva, a “child of the 80s” describes herself. The dialogue between images and words certainly occupies a central spot in her biography.
A photographer with a heightened curiosity about language is how Maritsa Kolcheva, a “child of the 80s” describes herself. The dialogue between images and words certainly occupies a central spot in her biography. She holds a bachelor's degree in Film Studies from the National Academy of Theater and Film Arts and a master's degree in Photography from the Royal Academy of Arts in the Netherlands. For more than a decade, she was an active presence in the Bulgarian cultural scene, enclosed her fears and phobias in the poetry collections Deep Breathing Strategies and .elastics and then escaped behind the lens. Meanwhile, she opened Elastics together with Desislav Lilkov – the first gallery dedicated to photography in Bulgaria, which was open for several years, starting its life in the capital and ending it with a parallel existence in Sofia and Plovdiv. She then left for the Netherlands, where she continued to grow as a photographer.
FROM THE POETICS OF LANGUAGE TO THAT OF PHOTOGRAPHY
There was never a competition between them. I am a visual person, which was largely determined by my childhood and my parents, who are artists. I have always been excited about language, I have a special sensitivity to words. I developed a special love for poetry in my teens, nothing has changed since then, but writing has never been my strong suit. I have always been interested in visual culture, I graduated with a degree in film studies, because the way photography is taught in Bulgaria did not suit my needs or my ideas about how this type of education should work. I find the theory of visual culture deeply intriguing. I am happy to have studied cinema, perhaps the most influential art form, but at the same time photography – like poetry – is leaves a wider space for imagination, for interpretation.
NORTHERN TRAILS
A combination of personal claustrophobia and professional interest took me to the Netherlands. It's an extremely suitable place for a person interested in the visual arts and culture, for an artist to develop. My friends are here, here I have the luxury of experimenting with art in a way I find to be true. It was a natural step, and on a very personal level it had been my life project for years, in fact it was delayed a little longer than it should have been.
FAVORITE PROJECTS AND THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ZBIGNIEW HERBERT AND PHOTOGRAPHY
My favorite projects are always the ones I'm about to do. A little over a year ago, I found myself in Warsaw with the task of shooting a photography project in ten days. I was looking for a personal connection to where I was, which I felt close to for no apparent, "objective" reason. This connection came from my literary family, from my love for Polish culture, for Polish poetry, in particular, Herbert's poetry. I wondered how I could achieve with images what he does with words? How could I borrow his method of dissecting the past, present, future in poetry and use that as a method in my photography? In the optics through which I view the city, through which I experience Poland? I was there just before the election, a very important election at the time. Herbert was always a politically engaged poet. A particularly emotional moment for me – to experience through images a country that I feel especially close to, because I feel close to its literature, culture, "the power of taste" – this very clear and specific kinship, which Georgi Gospodinov had in mind in "The Power of Language" (papa Eliot and grandma Emily). Anyone can use language, just like absolutely anyone can take pictures. The question is how we think photography, how we think words, how we organize them, what meaning we choose to give them, what significance.
THE LAST PICTURE I DIDN'T TAKE
The door of the Ministry of Defense in The Hague. You are not allowed to take pictures for security reasons. I also joined an online drawing class – an evening life drawing with Richard and Ruth, an elderly couple of models from the UK. I don't like to draw and I can't do it well, but it was endlessly pleasurable for me to follow their movements without a camera, with the movement of a pencil on paper, with the effort of my memory and imagination. After all, photography is largely in the process before the shutter-release button is pressed.
ELASTICS GALLERY
Elastics Gallery was my personal attempt to change the environment. The first space in Bulgaria dedicated entirely to documentary and art photography. Thanks to the inexhaustible enthusiasm and energy of my partner in life and work at that time, Desislav, I was able to gather the strength and motivation to do something I had dreamed of for years, but did not dare to do. At the same time, we were both terribly young, somehow naive, idealistic, unprepared. Different in our understanding of things. It cost us a great amount of material and mental resources. I would like to believe that during its four-five years of existence in Sofia, and then in parallel in Plovdiv (together with Lyubomir Atanasov), we managed to contribute at least a little to improving the attitude toward and understanding of photography in Bulgaria.
PHOTOGRAPHY – YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW
Photography is changing technicallyand conceptually. Yes, it's becomes more fluid, bolder and confident to step into other arts, the boundaries between the different arts are blurred, but in the end its means of expression do not change much. The way we consume images is changing. And this is where it gets interesting for me! How does technological progress change what society does with images, their production, use, distribution, perception and acceptance? Photography has a huge potential for influencing people, which is why visual culture is so important.
LOOKING AHEAD
In recent months, I have been busy organizing a symposium on photography and visual culture, Undisciplining photography, which will take place this spring at the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam. My co-organizers and I are preparing a podcast, online platform, a book, a series of follow up lectures and exhibitions to turn the so-called symposium into something more than a one-time event, into a living organism, a platform for visual culture. I am also the curator of a small exhibition at the Nederlands Fotomuseum, scheduled for May. I am thinking about a joint project with my artistic team here in the Netherlands – a group of extremely talented young photographers, all with teaching experience. I want to create an educational initiative in Bulgaria, to see if and how it would work. We are still in the very early stages. In short, I try to combine my personal photography projects with my interest in the theory of photography and visual culture.
More about Maritsa Kolcheva's work can be found at instagram.com/mari.kolcheva
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