Secrecy, intergenerational trauma and quietude are central components within Peter Pflügler’s work, and are laid bare more so than ever in Now Is Not The Right Time. Not to be missed, and unflinchingly personal, the composition reflects on his father’s suicide, and “the impossibility of secrets, of what we share when we hide. It’s a story about a pain inflicted out of love, about the complexity of silence and a boy’s unexplainable sadness.” Another example of these themes can be found in Ann Massal’s On Love, Violence And The Lack Of It, which offers a new interpretation of love and violence, whilst removing them from the conflicting dualities of good versus evil.
In keeping with tradition, this up-to-the-minute edition sees us encounter a line-up of four up-and-coming Bulgarian photographers, all of whom follow European talents showcased previously from countries such as Portugal, Romania, Armenia and Belarus through Circulation(s) ‘Focus on’ platform. For this year, they include; Salt In The Air, Sand In My Hair by Mihail Novakov, who captures the motions of human existence through a poetical lens, and Hristina Tasheva’s In Belief Is Power which focuses on xenophobia within Bulgaria alongside grappling with the notion of national identity in light of the influx of refugees. Alongside them, How To Forget Your Past Fast, introduces us to the works of Martin Atanasov. Assembled by Atanasov as a collage, the project fuses portraits of pop-folk Bulgarian music icons, and chalga together with photographs of the Bulgarian communist party under the helm of Nikola Mihov lifted from his titular work How to Forgot Your Past, in order to chart the transition from communism to democracy in his home country.
Tihomir Stoyanov’s I Give You My Face Portrait, is also undoubtedly worth highlighting, the piece presents us with a collection of twenty-three antique portraits captured between 1930 and 1991, before being sourced by the photographer in flea markets, and brought together to illustrate life in Bulgaria during the course of the early to late nineties. In the context of this work, these postage-stamped portraits, inscribed with messages on their backs, both serve as metaphorical, reminiscent blueprints of the country’s moral principles, along with its social-historical legacy and as reminders of the evolution of portrait photography.