Bulgaria is super cool
“Bulgaria is super cool” is personal long therm project still in progress
For Bulgarians the pride of the glorious past and the hope for a bright future seem to make the present invisible. Despite many disturbing trends, they are not so interested to improve neither the environment, nor the way they live. Lack of self confidence and unwillingness to do something here and now, turning people into passive observers. Bulgaria often leads negative rankings, but life goes on like a cheap film against ugly decor.
A train ride, a walk on the streets, encounters with strangers.
But where are the people?
By their fruit you will recognise them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Matthew 7:16
I want to show the people photographing the environment in which they live, not by their faces but by what surrounds them following the traces of their interaction with the environment. Exploring the faces of street obituaries to see what they were and looking the faces of destroying buildings to see what they are now.
I get on the train – an old locomotive, old wagons. I look out the window – I see wonderful land, I understand why for centuries people shed their blood to protect this land.
Today?
Today, the land seems to be no man’s land. Creepy skeletons of factories, abandoned buildings, small houses collapsed, weedy fields, landfills. The train windows are dirty, somehow blurring the view.
I reach into town and walk on the streets. Its dirty the air is saturated with fumes from cars and dust, people are frowning. Faces of street obituaries are serious and are everywhere – on the doors, trees, bus stops, the posts …
People are born and die, governments change, but in the cities and in the villages and fields can be seen the same thing: destruction.
And the memories begin to come… sad memories.