Quiet strength: The ladies group in Bulgarian photography of the 1960s and 1970s

Synthesis Gallery / 20.10.2026 – 5.12.2026

Deyana Stamatova, Kirilka Savova, Lilyana Georgieva, Lote Mihailova, Petra Atanasova, Rumyana Boyadzhieva, Rumyana Chapanova, Yanka Kyurkchieva Curator: Nadezhda Pavlova 20 October – 5 December 2026 Opening: 20 October, 6:30 pm, Synthesis Gallery In the presence of Rumyana Chapanova and Kirilka Savova Accompanying Programme: 27 October, 6:30 p.m.: Curator-led tour of the exhibition with Nadezhda Pavlova 26 November, 6:30 p.m.: Film screenings: “Yanka Kyurkchieva’s Legacy” (2023), 49 min., directed by Elena Angelova and Anton Daskalov, and “Bulgarian Photographers – Kirilka Savova” (2022), 19 min., directed by Emanuil Treyman. “Quiet Strength” presents the work of eight women who emerged on Bulgaria’s photographic scene during the 1960s and 1970s. The exhibition is based on several donations to the archive of the Bulgarian Academy of Photography “Yanka Kyurkchieva”. Alongside familiar works, the exhibition presents previously unseen photographs and materials from the photographers’ personal archives. It allows us to explore the relationship between their professional and artistic practices, tracing how these two spheres intertwined within the visual culture and the use of photography for propaganda during the socialist period. During this period, women began to occupy an increasingly prominent place in professional photography in Bulgaria. As Katerina Gadjeva observes: “At last, women photographers became indispensable – to document new developments in everyday life under socialism, to create images of the modern Bulgarian woman that female viewers and readers would want to emulate, and to take their cameras into places men could not enter – the maternity ward, the kindergarten, a young woman's room...”² Their professional skills were also recognised by established contemporaries. In 1981, Nikolay Shterev wrote that Bulgarian women photographers had formed a “school”, citing their publications, solo exhibitions, participation in photographic events and awards both in Bulgaria and abroad. Their presence was also evident in the pages of “Bulgarian Photo” magazine, where Boris Yuskeseliev, Krastan Dyankov, Petar Boev, Nikolay Shterev and others published profiles of the photographers and their work. Facsimiles of these articles are included in the exhibition. The photographers recall these years as a time of intense activity. As Kirilka Savova remembers: “Together with Rumyana Boyadzhieva and Deyana Stamatova, we were a powerful wave in Bulgarian journalism. Names everyone was mentioning. We were simply bursting with energy.” Among their early distinctions were the gold medal awarded to Lote Mihailova at the Second National Photography Exhibition in 1963, the “Photokina” award received by Rumyana Boyadzhieva in Cologne in 1966, and the selection of her photograph “The Most Excited” for a World Press Photo poster in The Hague that same year. The exhibition examines the photographic practices of these eight women beyond a simplistic distinction between “professional” and “artistic” work. For many of them, the two spheres overlapped: photographs created for a specific assignment were later exhibited, entered into competitions, won awards, and came to be recognised as works of art in their own right. Examples include Lilyana Georgieva’s series “Fishermen”³, Rumyana Boyadzhieva’s “Directorial Moments”, Kirilka Savova’s ballet photographs, and Rumyana Chapanova’s “Portraits Without a Brush”. In these cases, professional assignments became opportunities for observation, interpretation and the development of a personal photographic language. At the same time, each photographer explored her own subjects and experimented beyond her immediate professional commitments. Deyana Stamatova focused on the nude; Petra Atanasova photographed the Rhodope Mountains; Lote Mihailova returned to themes of motherhood and the bond between generations; and Yanka Kyurkchieva experimented with colour photographic techniques. The professional environment thus became a space of constant negotiation between editorial assignments and personal interests, between institutional expectations and the possibility of expressing a perspective of their own. This raises a number of questions: What role did these photographers play in propaganda? Where did the boundary lie between editorial assignments and artistic work? To what extent did they enjoy creative freedom? And how should we view these photographs today without reducing them to either of two extremes – mere products of an ideological system or artistic gestures entirely independent of it? The work prints, contact sheets, press clippings, award certificates and letters from the photographers’ personal archives, presented in the exhibition, invite us to reconsider some familiar photographs. These materials are accompanied by a retrospective look at the photographers’ presence in “Bulgarian Photo”. The magazine serves as an archive of their public image, allowing us to trace how it was shaped over the years. The personal archives and published materials complement one another: the archives offer insights into the photographers’ everyday lives and the material traces of their work, while the publications reveal how that work was presented to the public. Together, they offer a picture of women working within a particular political and professional system, following editorial requirements and fulfilling commissions, while simultaneously developing their own interests, participating in exhibitions and competitions, and seeking ways to express their individual visions. Their individual voices can be understood neither as entirely independent of the ideological framework of the time nor as wholly determined by it. Rather than focusing on a single historical moment, the exhibition seeks to trace the trajectories of these photographers, from their earliest professional assignments to their later artistic explorations. “Quiet Strength” opens a dialogue across time with eight women through the photographs, personal belongings and words they left behind. Today, we reopen the boxes they once closed and, from the fragments preserved within, piece together their stories. ¹ The term “the ladies’ group” was used by the translator and journalist Krastan Dyankov in an article published in “Bulgarian Photo” magazine in 1970 to refer to the women photographers actively working at the time. ² Katerina Gadjeva, 2019. “Women in Bulgarian Photography: Focus on the 1970s”. Art Studies Quarterly, no. 1, pp. 13-21. ³ The photographs by Lilyana Georgieva have been provided by the archive of Viktor Gerasimov. The exhibition is produced by Synthesis Gallery and the Bulgarian Academy of Photography “Yanka Kyurkchieva”, with financial support from the Ministry of Culture and Photosynthesis, in partnership with Film Scan, Treyman Foundation and Bistritsa Cinema and Photography Club. The exhibition is part of the Festival of Photography, People and Ideas, through which Photosynthesis celebrates its 20th anniversary and the 17th edition of the Month of Photography Festival.