Still Frame

exhibition of photographs by Milen Stankov

The photographer Milen Stankov, born 1976, is a careful observer. His attention is drawn by the details, by the delicate intercourse between images and their meanings. The three photo series, presented in The Red House Centre for Culture and Debate, are seeking the still image of the past. The first series of photographs is looking through the windows of the old bungalows of the International Youth Centre in Primorsko. Like a glass aquarium, the windows reflect the surrounding nature. These images seem to us close and distant. The bungalow rooms are impregnated with long forgotten objects from the socialist time. These rooms turn into peculiar visual laboratories for research on the past.
This topic, indirectly implied, is present in another series of photographs. This time the artist is looking at the present but through old photo material. Milen Stankov took pictures of usual everyday objects on a black-and-white plaque from the 80’s. The streets of a housing estate, a mother walking with her child, the view of the market halls of Technopolis. The image of Bulgaria in the 21st century with the new cars, billboards and modern malls almost disappears behind the veil of time created by the old black-and-white plaque.
The photographer also plays with time in the third series of the exhibition. The scene is placed in the countryside, in Stankov’s grandmother’s house. There, on the old shelves, on the couch, next to the old family photos are arranged many big yellow pears. Their fragility corresponds in a strange way with the atmosphere in the room.

The exhibition “Still Frame” is a preceding visual commentary on the presentation of the book “I Lived Socialism” on February 28.

Milen Stankov was born in 1976, graduate of Sofia University in Physics and Mathematics. Since 2000 is a freelance photographer.
The exhibition “Still Frame” consists of the photos series “Inside/ Outside”, “Double” and “Pears”.

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