VILLAGE DEPTH project WIP

Work in progress on the Balkan village’s treasure, depth, darkness, and serenity;
-Documentary photography & drawings, some writing, and a few project proposals / Bulgaria 2020

conceived during “Radical Imagination Artist Residency” which welcomed 11 international artists for a month of exploration and initiative within the community and homes of the people of Deleyna village in northwestern Bulgaria – the country’s poorest and most underdeveloped region;

“I can only say with certainty that we learned and acquired a terrible lot, and they were pleased to have somebody to show themselves to. In little places like that there is a certain tragedy in people that comes with the thought that nobody’s gonna see that which you are building and that once you’re gone, it’ll just die out in time. (There to be noone to see you and you to be getting old – I imagine could be really scary somehow. That’s why some of the women upload to Facebook photos of their flowers and others apply all their morality to some character in a Turkish tv series.) A person doesn’t often realize how valuable his attention could be for somebody. And they brightened up so and started running round their houses fixing things up and rushing to tell us everything – from some deep heavy personal histories, through legends of the heroism of their ancestors and criticizing the contemporary world and politics all the way to why the grapes ain’t good this year.

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I had started thinking of all the elements that govern the life of the inhabitants of a such small and secluded place. Regarding the village, from the very beginning, as a microcosmos with its own dynamics, I was wondering what role do land, food, memory, work, tradition and customs, the border, old age, death, and television play. Everything I’ve thought and explored is in the shape of nervous notes which are nervous because there is this wisdom there in these people which I don’t fully understand and I wished I did and was trying to grasp it. And this wisdom or depth  /village depth/ we each felt, realizing the lacks and poverty and difficulties with which they live and seeing how lively, loving and truthful they remain nonetheless.”