Full Frontal Flash proudly presents Svilen Nachev. Bulgarian master photographer with a flash in one hand and a giant African land snail in the other.
Tell us a bit about yourself. I am 42 years old, Bulgarian, married with 3 children, we’ve got 6 cats, a mini hamster, a giant African land snail and many fishes 🙂
When did you start with photography and more importantly when and why did you start to use a flash? I’m interested in photography since my teens but start shooting the streets in 2011 first in BW. Then in 2017 I decided to start shooting in colour and since 2019 I shoot with flash everywhere and anytime. This decision came to me like a challenge for myself and is inspired from some great photographers that use a flash like Weegee, Mark Cohen and Lars Tunbjörk.
Could you describe your photographic style? My style is to shoot with my heart and to select with my brain.
I can’t say what I’m looking for in photography. I’m trying through the reality to show the invisible, the unreal, even the spiritual.
Show us some of your flash photos and tell us something about them
This picture I made in probably the strongest blizzard I have ever seen in my life. I prepared myself, the camera and the flash with special equipment and I made only 5 pictures that day. I think I was very lucky to meet this beautiful old lady with this green coat on the street. I took only two pictures of her in one minutes time. You can see the drops on the lens. I found this mysterious face on the fence in the garden of my brother’s new house. There was many other faces there, but I liked this oneThis one is made on Epiphany day, which is a very important Orthodoxy Christian holiday in Bulgaria. This is the Danube river in January. So you have to catch the cross in the cold water. When I made the picture I didn’t see the drone that looks like the white pigeon over the cross that is the symbol of The Holy Spirit. I saw it when I started the editing process. When I made this picture I saw that it looks like some abstract painting without colors. It didn’t show anything special but it makes me feel in a special way. Then about 4 months after I made the picture I found that there is a similar painting from Wassily Kandinsky. It’s called “White Stroke”The last one is very interesting to me because it’s made at the former concentration camp on Belene Island. This is the Bulgarian Gulag during the communist regime and probably the scariest place in Bulgaria then, where many people died without any court and sentence. This goat family with one horn each lives in the only building that is left there.
Thank you very much!
Thank you Svilen and again, welcome to the Full Frontal (Flash) Collective. We’re honored to have you as a member.
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