Photos of common people living in the first three decades of the XX century can be seen in the book “100 years ago with the glass plates of Antip Obushtarov (1888-1942)” at the Cultural Center “Svetlina – 1861” in Shipka, Bulgaria.
Serious faces are a shared feature in these photos. Taking a photo at the time was indeed a serious and special event: it demanded money, the gathering of several people and elegant dresses.
People in the streets or in a wheat field, teachers, soldiers, widows and youths dwell in these images. Fragments of everyday life show how trivial moments in the present turn into a completely different reality in the future. The transformation made by time is manifested in these drops of ancient times.
Moreover, remained in Antip’s father’s house for 80 years, these prints have been changed by humidity and light. Through mold, time left its permanent mark on them.
Therefore, lots of faces disappeared, some landscapes are no more visible: in some pictures, everything has been consumed and reality distorted.
In these images, black and white combine in new unexpected ways: the two colours create a dance of gloomy patterns. They remind me the infernal prints by the symbolist French illustrators Gustave Doré and Odilon Redon.
Indeed, these prints look like a journey into the unconscious: Hermann Rorschach could have used them for his psychological tests.
They could also seem taken from an American fantasy writer H. P. Lovecraft’s book or by the heroic fantasy Kentarō Miura’s manga “Berzerk”.
This example of visual art shows us that adversities can be turned into something new.
From the mud comes the water lily, from manure come new flowers and from mold comes new art. This is how damages can create new art.
