Arch. Nikolay Popov is one of the fore-runners of Bulgarian art photography, a bright and original talent, one of the classics of Bulgarian photo art. In 1951, he was one of the first to be awarded the title “Fine Art Photography Artist”, and in 1961, for his great mastery and perfect technique, he was awarded the EFIAP distinction. For two decades, he had become visible as an art photographer with a broad general and pictorial culture, brilliant artistic individuality, with a personal signature and style, subtle aesthetic insight, psychological depth, poetic sensitivity, ability for conceptual and artful narrative. A tale of Nessebar The exhibition was displayed for the first time in 1961, being exactly the opposite of the then circulating photo propaganda of the new life. It reveals that life in its spontaneity and familiarity cannot be new, but is always the same. And the fishermen with their nets continue in the black and white images of Arch. Popov to take fish out of the sea, as they always did. The photographer seeks the joy of life away from the offensives of history, which poses in front of his camera only with its stony traces. To him, history together with nature and the bridges that architecture builds between them are nothing more than an exquisite decor of everyday life with its rituals, with its hopes, with its innocence… In front of Arch. Popov’s lens everyday life is far from banal, but poetic, and his poetry arrives in Nessebar “by sea”. He is a classic for yet another reason – time has not been able to devalue anything in his photographs. They could have easily been taken today, as long as someone with his skill and talent is found to preserve in their images coastal life from the ravages of post-commu