APPARITIONS

THE EXHIBITION “APPARITIONS FROM THE LAND OF THE KUKERI” IS PART OF THE PROJECT “THE LAND OF THE KUKERI – TRAVELLING EXHIBITION”. ORGANISED WITH THE FINANCIAL SUPPORT OF THE NATIONAL CULTURE FUND OF BULGARIA.

At daybreak, the village was submerged in thick white fog. I made my way along the broken street, and before me the ruins of houses began to emerge one after another. In the centre, I came upon an empty bakery, the rusting skeleton of a supermarket, then a large abandoned school, strange, half-inhabited apartment blocks, and still more evidence that many people had once lived here. It was the morning of Kukeri Day in Momina Tsarkva. When I returned, the group of young men – most of them born and raised in Burgas – was already prepared, and everyone was putting on their masks. Amid the mist-shrouded ruins around me, they suddenly looked like spirits. On an impulse, I led one of them to a nearby ruined house and, looking through the camera’s viewfinder, felt a shiver run through me. The piercing cry of the bagpipe cut through the silence; the drum struck and the bells began to ring. The Kukeri group set off through the village, inevitably passing the many abandoned homes and public buildings. As if possessed, I began drawing individual Kukeri away to photograph them in the desolate spaces, then returning them to the noisy celebration. And so, without any prior plan, on a day that was otherwise festive for the local people, the series Apparitions was born. According to an ancient tradition, the Kukeri go from house to house to drive away evil and bring health and fertility to their hosts. In these photographs, their role was reversed: they became spectral inhabitants – spirits of a fading world – leading me back through the time and history of this place. And yet behind every mask in this series stands a real person, and Kukeri Day will continue to bring the community together. That is why Apparitions is not a story about a vanished village, but about that fragile moment when presence and absence still exist side by side.