After the Fathers
A field study of a vanishing man
“You’re a man. Pull yourself together!”
My father used to say this to me.
I was born in Bulgaria in 1987, just two years before the end of the communist regime. I grew up during the 1990s, a time when the country was going through major political, economic and social changes. Many of the men around me had grown up in a different world, with ideas about authority, responsibility and what it meant to be a man shaped by a different time.
Looking back, I realise that I was learning from men who were themselves trying to find their place in a changing society.
*After the Fathers* began as a personal attempt to understand the male figures who shaped my childhood, their presence and absence, and the things I inherited from them without even realising it.
But the project is not really about fathers.
It looks at masculinity as something we inherit not only from our families, but from the society around us — through gestures, expectations, traditions and behaviours that become so familiar we rarely question them.
Moving between documentary observation and constructed images, the work explores the contradictions of masculinity: strength and vulnerability, intimacy and distance, care and control. Rather than trying to define what a man is, I am interested in how these ideas are learned, repeated and passed from one generation to another.
Ultimately, *After the Fathers* is also a question I ask myself: how much of who we are has already been decided before we have the chance to choose?
"Archival photograph sourced from the Bulgarian Visual Archive (BVA). Collage and adaptation by Dimitri Stefanov. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/"
Field Notes from Montana
Field Notes from Montana brings together photographs made while traveling across Montana, USA. Moving between landscapes, interiors and everyday encounters, the series explores the poetry hidden within ordinary moments.
Amen
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.” - John 1:1
Amen is a photographic project born from the sense that faith has become a foreign land in the contemporary world. Inspired by fragments of the Bible, the project longs to restore an emotional connection with the Word, not as religious doctrine, but as inner truth.
Collapse
2011-2023, Bulgaria
Since the fall of communism in 1989, Bulgaria has undergone a difficult economic and social transition. The severe financial crisis of 1996 deepened instability, forcing many people to leave the country in search of work and security. This period reshaped everyday life, widening social inequalities and creating lasting uncertainty for those who remained.
In Profundis
In Profundis is a photographic series I created between 2009 and 2011 in Northern Bulgaria. When I was thirteen, I lost my uncle — a man I deeply admired. We never had the chance to say goodbye. Years later, still struggling with this loss, I began photographing funerals in small Bulgarian villages. Entering these intimate moments was only possible through honesty and empathy. The series reflects on fragility, mourning, and the human need to find meaning in loss.
