Holds our Photographers and Photographer specific data

Petar Abadzhiev

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Born on 20.05.1936 in Varna. Doyen of Bulgarian photography. After graduating in Chemistry at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, he specialized in reproduction and general photography in Vienna. He teaches Fine Art and Applied Photography at NATFA “Kr. Sarafov”, the New Bulgarian University, the Art College and the Department of Journalism. He has participated in the photographic life with over 30 solo author’s exhibitions in Bulgaria and abroad. Author and illustrator, he has also worked on layouts of calendars, books and albums. Fine Art Photography Artist since 1980. He is the winner of prizes, distinctions and awards, among which Bifota Berlin, Macon France, National Competition Lithuania, the world exhibition of photography in Japan Asahi Shimbun, Contemporary Photography Hungary, the international competition “The Earth and the People”, the exhibition “Bulgaria – ancient and young” and many others. Besides his artistic work, he works brilliantly in the field of education and has encouraged the growth of a number of today’s prominent photographers. He was awarded the Honorary Sign of Sofia and the Honorary ACADEMICA Statuette. JUBILEE EXHIBITION The selected photographs are retrospective in some sense, celebrating the author’s Anniversary and are an exciting encounter with familiar and unfamiliar human faces, captured landscape moments and modes of being. The work of Petar Abadzhiev is subdivided into two large groups of works. The first introduces images from reality, many portraits of familiar people and landscapes. Almost all of them were processed, although some were photographed on film. The other large group of photos reflects his emotion, intertwined with fantasies and dreams. Thus, Petar Abadzhiev’s work has always been and is distinguished by his clearly articulated author’s diction which is particularly difficult in photographic art.

Tihomir Penov

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Tihomir Penov was born in 1960 in Plovdiv. He received his education at the National High School of Stage and Film Design in Plovdiv, the National High School of Polygraphy and Photography in Sofia and the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. He has worked as a studio photographer, practiced outdoor photography, was a photographer at the Medical Academy, the “Glas” newspaper and a theater photographer. Since 1997 he has been with Pressphoto-Bulgarian News Agency, and since 2007 he has been a freelancer. He has recurrently won competitions in Bulgaria and abroad. He has displayed over 40 solo exhibitions in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Canada, Switzerland, Norway and Denmark. For many years, Tihomir Penov has worked as a photojournalist for the press with an exceptionally strong for Bulgaria presence in photo expressionism, which has brought him numerous awards. He is the winner of the Honorary ACADEMICA Statuette. PORTRAITS FROM THE PANTRY This is a collection shot over a long period of time, in the breaks of reportage photography. Different cameras and formats are used, different developers and different moods of the photographer and the models. These very chaste, very subtle subjects that Penov takes out of his “pantry” bring us back to our innate perception not to lie, not to abuse our models, but let them enact themselves for a little while. In this collection, Tihomir reveals his youthful, childlike soul through his eyes; an essence he had locked in the pantry, and reminds us that we have forgotten about the beauty of photography. Penov says that everyone has “items from the pantry” in themselves and must display them someday. In the exhibition, all the photos are black and white, because “this is the classic, the best approach, more truly and graphically explaining our work”.

Milan Hristev

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Milan Hristev was born in 1963 in Plovdiv. He took up photography as a student in 1975. Until he graduated from high school, every year he won the 1st or 2nd place at the district and national photography contests of Youth Technical and Scientific Creativity. After military service, in 1985 he graduated from the Julius Fučík High School of Polygraphy and Photography. In 1985, he successfully specialized in ORWO plant in Germany. In 1990, he was awarded the title of Fine Art Photography Artist, and in 1993 with the Artist FIAP distinction. He presented author’s collections in Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Macedonia, USA, Switzerland and Hungary. Milan participated and won awards in more than 60 Bulgarian and international joint exhibitions. He is the winner of the Honorary ACADEMICA Statuette. He currently owns a photo studio with the FOTOMAX Gallery in Plovdiv. STREET PHOTOGRAPHY Milan Hristev is one of the Bulgarian photographers who shoot all the time. About his collection of street photos, he briefly shares that these are the impressions that everyday life has offered to him. It is a hunt for chance, a frivolous paraphrase of Cartier-Bresson. This is a freeing exercise in insight. The style is classic, halftone black and white photography. There are no intrusive compositional experiments, but the composition is dynamic and varied, unrepeatable. A medium and general plan with in-depth development is used. The author’s attention is directed at the elements of the image and their comprehension and interpretation (the connotation of the photo, according to Barthes), as Milan Hristev’s style is defined in professional photo criticism. The presented photographs will inspire us to reflect on Milan Hristev’s laconic visual haiku-stanzas, which, displayed together and from the distance of time, paint an ingenious picture of everyday life in our country.

Nikolai Vassilev

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Nikolai Vassilev is a freelance photographer. The main areas in his photographic activity are documentary, reportage, architectural, archaeology, animalistic and scientific photography. He is the author of illustrations in encyclopedic editions, albums on architecture, numismatics, calendars and technical manuals. He has photo documented numerous archaeological sites such as Serdika, Pautalia, Ulpia Eskus, Sboryanovo Archaeological Reserve (3D photography of the Sveshtari Thracian Tomb). He taught a photography course at the School for Reserve Officers, Vratsa. He is the author of six exhibitions presented in Sofia, Kyustendil and Moscow. He has participated in more than 100 national and international salons and is the winner of 14 awards. He was awarded the title Fine Art Photography Artist in 1979. In 2009 he was awarded the distinction Artist FIAP and in 2013 – EFIAP. He has been a member of the National Academy of Photography Yanka Kyurkchieva since 2000 and was a member of the Management Board. KREMIKOVTSI’88 The year was 1988, the wind of perestroika was blowing from the East, people perceived that something was going to happen soon, although no one expected it would be the collapse of the entire system. The daily life at Kremikovtsi Metallurgical Complex was a fraction of that time and, as it were, outside of it. The plant was huge, as if eternal. In the images, one can discern the keen insight about a life situation, about the small things of everyday routine, the skill of observation and accuracy of self-expression. Means of articulation are sparing – classic black and white stylistics without dramatically intensified dark spaces, accurate detail, in most cases traditional perspectives. It can be seen that the author relies not so much on compositional, geometric and tonal solutions as on reportage intensity in pursuit of the decisive or non-decisive moment.

Yavor Popov

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Born on 2.12.1949 in Sofia. He graduated from the “Julius Fucik” School of Photography and Polygraphy. In 1979, he was awarded the title of Fine Art Photography Artist by the Ministry of Culture. From 1973 to 1995, he was a photographer-editor in the editorial office of “Forek” – “Bulgarian Photography”. He has been a freelancer since 1995. He participated in many significant projects, such as the multi-volume “History of Bulgaria” of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences publishing house; “The Thracians” of “Urania” publishing house; Leipzig; “40 Years of Monumental Art in Bulgaria” and many others. He is the author of a number of advertising posters, billboards, catalogs, calendars and albums. Since 1980, he has participated in numerous solo and joint exhibitions in Bulgaria and abroad. He is the winner of many awards such as the Grand Prize of the national plein-air “In the mountain of Orpheus”; the Honorary ACADEMICA Statuette; the Grand prize in the plein-air of advertising photography Smolyan and others. He is a member of the Management Board of the Association of Advertising Photographers in Bulgaria. From 2001 to 2019, he was the Chairman of the National Academy of Photography (Bulgaria). Since March 2010, he has been a photographer at the National Art Gallery. BIG PORTRAITS The exhibition deserves to be defined with a sentence reminiscent of a tongue-twister: “A photographer photographs a photographer.” Photographing colleagues, Yavor takes them out of the center of “seeing invisibility” and “throws” them into the periphery of visibility. But “throw” is more than an inaccurate word for they willingly stand in front of his camera and allow him, as in a forgotten tribal ritual, to symbolically take away their power. And here we can ask like the Little Red Riding Hood: “Yavor, why are your portraits so big?” The answer is: “Because they are paper memorials to those who, in the last twenty years, have shown the ‘heroism of seeing,'” as Susan Sontag defines photography. Personally, I would rather tear down some “monuments” and put up others, but these are empty threats, because the only way for someone to get out of the belly of the Wolf is only if one had devoured the beast first. You may wonder what Yavor and the Wolf have in common. It’s their ability to absorb others into themselves and then the “devoured” to come out not only unscathed, but even more alive than before.

Petra Atanasova

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Born on 20.12.1934 in the village of Bratya Kunchevi, Stara Zagora district. She lives in the village of Debrashtitsa, Pazardzhik district. In 1960, she started working as a laboratory technician in Bulgarian Photography, Pazardzhik. In 1970, she was awarded the title of Fine Art Photography Artist and was appointed Head of the Center for Photo Information and Photo Propaganda where since 1983 she has been its editor-in-chief. Winner of the award for overall contribution to the development of the culture of Pazardzhik municipality 2010, as well as the awards “Honorary Sign” of Pazardzhik for 2018; the Honorary ACADEMICA Statuette for 2011; First prize at the First International Photo Contest “Land for All” in Sofia 1995; international competition “PENTACON-ORWO” in the GDR; participation in the national exhibition “Pirin – Photo”; participation in the Sofia Biennial and many others. She has numerous publications in the Bulgarian and foreign press. She was a permanent associate of the Dramatic Theatre “K. Velichkov”, Pazardzhik, from 1970 to 1990. THE RHODOPE – A LAND SO BULGARIAN The exhibition conveys the artistic image not only of the mountain and the land, but also of the Rhodope woman as a generalized image of the Bulgarian woman, reminiscent of Vazov’s short story “One Bulgarian Woman”. Her photographs are the image of the land, in truth the Rhodope, but this image is also generalized enough to embark from the Rhodope and represent the Land in general… The soul of the land is a central image and theme. In this context, it seems that this is not a speculative observation – her landscapes relate to portraits, but the opposite is also true – in a sense, the portraits of the people of the Rhodope, of the Rhodope women, on the face of which their own history entwined with the land is inscribed and to a large extent resemble landscapes in a specific way. We see the Rhodope itself in these faces. They tell about the mountain and Bulgaria. The exhibition is a treasure that Bulgarian culture has acquired thanks to Petra. She is a classic of Bulgarian photography. Her very approach to work is classic in the most beautiful sense of the word, nothing offhand, no inessential moves, nothing unintentional.

Deyana Stamatova

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Deyana Stamatova was born in Burgas. She graduated from the Julius Fučík College of Photography and later became a teaching assistant at the Semi-Higher Teachers’ Institute in Burgas. A few years later she moved to Sofia, where she worked for the Zhar newspaper and several other editions, including “1000 days”, “Express” and “168 hours”. Other than photojournalism, Deyana Stamatova worked on personal art projects. She is best known for her alternative interpretation of the naked body. She attached great importance to the work in the photographic laboratory. For her, all the experiments conducted there are no less important than the shooting process itself. Her career features more than twenty solo exhibitions and numerous awards from Bulgarian and international photo salons. THE RIOT OF IMAGES The exhibition, dedicated to the 80th Anniversary of her birth, presents her emblematic series and includes over 50 photographs, gelatin silver originals, copied personally by the author and donated to the Academy of Photography by her husband. Deyana Stamatova shared, “To me, nude photography means anything but showing the human body… To me, the nude image becomes a nude image only when it speaks about the essence of the represented person, about the character of the model. To this character I attribute certain idea that they themselves bear in their core… Because nude photography is a way to understand the person who is depicted. Because the meaning of photography in general, of all its genres is to show the people, the person, the techniques it employs. Photography is about the person in general. This has always been central in any art – the human being, the human essence. And they can be revealed through nude photography… I know about women, I myself am a woman…“

Rumyana Boyadzhieva

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Rumyana Boyadzhieva was born in the village of Tsar Ivan Asen, Popovo District. She started her career in the “Bulgaria” magazine under the watchful eye of Nikola Stoichkov. With the establisrhment of the Bulgarian Television, she started working there and thus became the founder and head of the photo department where she worked until her untimely death in 1992. Author of solo exhibitions displayed abroad. Member of the Union of Bulgarian Journalists. She is the winner of the Artist FIAP distinction. She won numerous awards, and certain peak in her career was marked in 1966 when her photo became a poster and was on the cover of the World Press Photo catalog. Winner of the Photokina Grand prize. She was not allowed to travel to Western countries but was decorated the Order of St. St. “Cyril and Methodius” the 1st Degree. She devoted years to the art of ballet, which earned her recognition from ballet specialist Arnold Haskell for her exhibition at the Varna Ballet Competition: “I don’t know where greater ballet is – here, in the exhibition, or there, on the stage.”. SELECTED WORKS The collection presents the most important professional features of Rumyana Boyadzhieva, one of which is the reportage art of the urban everyday life, extracting moments from the uncontrollable daily routine proposing, however, the wonderful opportunity to get closer to the person, to feel them, to give them a chance through a situation, often mildly amusing or even comical, to manifest themselves. She was and created, in a sense, the model of a television photographer. Practically, when one passes by the boards at the National Television right now, one will see her photographs and all the people who live through these photographs. They are what Roland Barthes calls “photogrammes” and are both fragments, usually of some plot, show, movie, production, and at the same time depict the

Professor Rumen Georgiev –RUM

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Born on September 26 in the village of Bezhanovo, Lovech district. In 1973 he graduated from the Moscow State Institute of Cinematography and 17 years later he became Associate Professor in photography. For many years he was a director of photography at the Boyana Film Studios and the Studio for Documentary and Popular Science Films. In the meantime, he worked as a freelance photographer and editor. In 1979, he was awarded the title of Fine Art Photography Artist. In 1997, Prof. Georgiev founded the “Art Photography” major at NATFA “Kr. Sarafov”, which for the first time provided an opportunity for higher education in the art of photography in Bulgaria. Over the years, he has had dozens of solo exhibitions in Bulgaria and abroad. In 1993, his project “Balkan Naivist Photographers” received a grant from the Swedish foundation “Erna & Victor Hasselbald”. After his death in 2008, the vast part of his archive was lost. He is the winner of the Honorary ACADEMICA Statuette. On the occasion of Prof. Georgiev’s cycle “Ordinary People”, the great French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson wrote to him, “… I was deeply touched by your beautiful album” Ordinary People “, in which you prove that with mind and heart, all people become (extra) ordinary …” SELECTED WORKS The exhibition shows photographs from the series “Ordinary People”, “Village Pub”, “Ward № 13” and others, preserved in the collections of Yanka Kyurkchieva Academy of Photography. The images reveal the beauty of everyday human relationships in a unique way. “If it comes to which genre I’ve worked in the most, it would be reportage photography in the broadest sense of the word. Another genre is what the English call “street photography”, where it is not a question of capturing streets and buildings, but in an idiomatic sense – of photographing people.” (RUM) All exhibited photographic copies are made by the author.

Yanka Kyurkchieva

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Yanka Kyurkchieva is an emblematic figure in Bulgarian photography. She was born in Veliko Tarnovo on April 24, 1929. “Her name is widely known throughout the country. The hundreds of students who graduated from the Photography Department of the High School of Polygraphy and Photography remember it… – this is the beginning of her artistic portrait by Boris Yuskeseliev, published in the “Bulgarian Photo” magazine in 1981. These words are still relevant today, but we must also add the students from the New Bulgarian University where she was a lecturer from 1996 to 2006, as well as the photo amateurs and all professional photographers in Bulgaria. Yanka Kyurkchieva graduated in French philology in 1955 but life took her in a different direction – she started working at the X-ray Institute of ISUL University Hospital. One of her tasks there was to establish a photo lab. This determined her entire further life path. She began with scientific photography – the first nuclear photography and the first autoradiography in Bulgaria were made by her in the period 1959-1962. 1962 marked the beginning of her long journey as a lecturer in photography which continued. until the end of her life. Her great contribution was recognized by the order “St. St. Cyril and Methodius” 1st Degree, the diploma and distinction “Expert Lecturer” of FIAP, Lecturer of the Year for 2000/2001 at the NBU. As a member of the FIAP lecture group, she delivered numerous reports at international seminars, some of which have been published in the collection of the International Federation of Photographic Art. In parallel with her teaching activity, Yanka Kyurkchieva also worked in the field of education, publishing four textbooks on photography, which to this day are the most serious works on photography by a Bulgarian author and are a unique contribution to the specific education in this field. Contacts with Yanka Kyurkchieva did not end with the completion of photography education – only then did they begin. They continued throughout the entire artistic and professional journey of photographers. For them, she was not only a teacher, but also a friend, a person who could always be counted on for both professional advice and help or just human understanding. However, her significance for Bulgarian photography is not limited to the photographers she trained. She herself was also a prominent artist who participated in many Bulgarian and international exhibitions. She received international recognition as the AFIAP (Artist of the International Federation of Photographic Art) in 1974, the title Fine Art Photography Artist in 1970, many diplomas, certificates and awards. The first solo color art exhibition in Bulgaria was the result of her efforts. “It was one of the first and then rare meetings of photo art connoisseurs with color photography which left strong impressions and the confidence that art can also be created with the means of color photography.” Speaking of Yanka Kyurkchieva, we must not forget to mention the numerous articles in the field of photographic mastery, photography pedagogy, scientific photography, the history of photography. Her participation as a member of the jury was a guarantee for an uncompromising evaluation of the works and prestige for every photo contest. And yet, perhaps one of her greatest contributions to Bulgarian photography was the establishment of the Bulgarian National Association Academy of Photography in 1999, of which she was the Founder and Honorary Chairperson. It is the network that unites photographers from all branches of the profession as well as prominent photo enthusiasts countrywide. Participation in the annual reviews of photographic art, organized by the National Academy of Photography (Bulgaria), which today proudly bears the name of Yanka Kyurkchieva, is prestigious for every Bulgarian photographer, and the award received in these reviews is an expression of recognition of the author’s artistic achievements. The highest distinction that a photographer can hope for in our country is receiving the ACADEMICA Statuette, which is the Grand prize awarded for special merits in photography. In 2006, Yanka Kyurkchieva was awarded the Honorary ACADEMICA Statuette. Yanka Kyurkchieva restored Bulgaria’s membership in FIAP in 2003 with the National Academy of Photography (Bulgaria) becoming the operational member and the official representative of FIAP. Her work and personality will leave deep traces in the life and professional career of several generations of Bulgarian photographers. Her whole life was marked by activities directed at the development and acknowledgement of the community devoted to the art of photography. SELECTED WORKS The exhibition presented in this publication includes photos made with classic photographic equipment and manual color copying. They reveal the wealth of colors and shapes obtained in the creative interpretation of graphic photographic techniques. Unique artistic and documentary frames had captured many cultural monuments, people and events that happened for the first time in Bulgaria. Yanka Kyurkchieva displayed this exhibition in Veliko Tarnovo only a month before her death and donated it to the Tarnovo Museum.