Svetlana Bachevanova is a notable Bulgarian photographer. She served as lead photographer for an anti-communist newspaper, Demokrazia, and for the first democratically elected Bulgarian Prime Minister. She now lives in the United States where she launched FotoEvidence which supports the role of photojournalists.
Bulgaria –
Emaho caught up with renowned Bulgarian photographer and founder of FotoEvidence, Svetlana Bachevanova to learn what it takes to tear down the Iron Curtains of ignorance.
Manik : What made you study photography and take it as profession later? What was your work as a medical photographer?
I became a medical photographer because I wanted to be a sculptor. My parents, who were doctors, wanted me to follow the family tradition and study medicine. I was 18 years old and my favourite book at this time was, “The Agony and Ecstasy” by Irving Stone, a biography of Michelangelo. I read this book again and again, trying to learn from his life how to become a sculptor. I thought it was very important to learn the structure of the human body. From the book, I learned that the best way to study anatomy is to do dissections. The only place I could do this was at the Medical University in Sofia, Bulgaria.
When I expressed my desire to work at the medical school my father helped me to find a position there as a photographer. His hope was that being around the medical school; I might change my mind and agree to study medicine. My hope was that once I was there I could sneak into some of the anatomy classes where students do dissections; which I did.
Before long, I realised that I didn’t have the temperament of a sculptor. It was too slow a process. But photography gave me almost instant results in the darkroom. My job at the medical academy was to document surgeries, experiments, photograph unusual skin diseases and micro photography. In my spare time I was portraying my family and people from the street. Photojournalism at this time in Bulgaria was purely communist propaganda and staged events. So instead I worked in art photography – nudes, conceptual photography etc. Eight years passed before I got my first real job as photojournalist in the anticommunist newspaper Demokrazia.
Manik : How did the idea of forming FotoEvidence come about?
I was born in Bulgaria, in the dark age of Communism. There, I witnessed and experienced the worst of living under oppression: the disappearance of people with dissenting political views; people sent to prison for asking political questions; parents who escaped the country leaving their children behind; the oppression of ethnic Turks and Roma, the silencing of intellectuals; and the forced conversion of religious minorities. I first became a human rights activist to protect religious minorities during a period of persecution.
In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I become chief photographer for the first anticommunist newspaper in Bulgaria, “Democracy”. There I photographed and wrote about the struggle to wrest my country from the Communists; a struggle that took many years in Bulgaria. My life work has always been focused on human rights and the freedom of expression.
