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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”.
