photographing in unfavourable conditions
/ 2021-2022
photography & moving imageSite-specific installation created for the exhibition of the nominees of the BAZA Award for Contemporary Art, at Sofia City Art Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria
curator Marina Slavova
Installation awarded the BAZA Award for Contemporary Art 2022
What happens with the photograph when the camera is held by the state? In the site-specific installation, I look into how history is represented and depicted by institutions and individuals in power, thus the past is always circling around a specific agenda.
Photographing in unfavourable conditions employs archival films and documents related to the medium and technology of photography that are part of the declassified archives of the Bulgarian Secret Police . These materials were created and used in the training of agents and individuals working for the Ministry of Interior, the militia and State Security. The documents describe a methodology towards creating an “objective photograph” - which is only achieved by following technical strategies, camera settings, rules and processes. If everything is followed correctly, one is assured that not only will the photograph be objective, but it will also become evidence - it will be able to tell also stories that have happened after and before it.
The installation space comes together as demanding, prompting the viewer to focus on the voids and stay alert for potentially important messages which pop up on the screens in a form of text or image. What does the beholder feel while spontaneously encountering an obscure photograph of a pit in the ground? Are there signs of unreasonable persecution happening captured by security camera footage? What was Bulgaria for over half a century of communist regime in 1940s-1980s? Who was the alien? Who was the manipulator? Where does aggression start? At the outset, Butseva’s project completely confuses the understanding of what is staged vs non-staged reality, what is performed vs non performed.
Butseva is attentive to which stories we are crafted out of and which stories we participate in crafting, taking the latter responsibly. Her practice poses larger questions on how contemporary artists should work with negative spaces - the spaced of erased memory, vanished political identity, eroded communities. To paraphrase one of the quotes from instructions for state-employed photographers used by Butseva in her installation video, the work “Photographing in Unfourable Conditions” points at their aiming. In the current attempts for transitional justice and reparations in post-communist Bulgaria, Butseva’s voice advocates for response-ability — the exigency to participate in mnemonic resistance and to acknowledge the crimes of the former regime and trauma inherited transgenerationaly through silences. "
- Lilia Kudelia
Curator at the Ukrainian Museum, New York
Curator in the Young Visual Artists Award program at Residency Unlimited
Curator of the Ukrainian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale
Visual Curator in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas, Arlington
Curator at the Ukrainian Museum, New York
Curator in the Young Visual Artists Award program at Residency Unlimited
Curator of the Ukrainian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale
Visual Curator in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas, Arlington
SDOTO-secret literature: inventory Nº 691 Secret photographing during unfavourable atmospheric and lighting conditions and in motion of the operational worker; 1962; Author: Academy "Georgi Dimitrov" Ministry of Interior
SDOTO-secret literature: Vh. Nº 54/29.05.1967 Secret photographing from large distance, 1967.
SDOTO-secret literature: inventory Nº 229 Operational photography: 1972.
VSSH "Georgi Dimitrov" - Ministry of Interior, lieutenant colonel Kono Kokov