The Naïve Orpheus
The afternoon is late, the rain outside is heavy, it smells of spring. I have my phone close by, expecting an anticipated call. My newly bought Moleskin is before me, waiting to be filled with all the “brilliant” questions I am to come up with for my subject. I will do it the right way this time. Prepared, confident, unstoppable.
The phone rings — it is him. My heart starts racing and bumping against my ribcage. Is he going to accept? I’ve never had someone so established say yes. What if he recognizes I’m just a student — but I’m not just any student, I love his art.
But I am just a student, he wouldn’t bother.
But it was him who gave me his phone number.
Okay, just pick up.
I pick up after my three-second spectacle of doubt. I hear the eloquent voice on the other end spill over like the heavy rain.
He agrees. He not only agrees to give me an interview but suggests having it now.
Now? I look at the blank pages of my notebook. Now?
I hesitate for a second and reply with a bold, confident ‘okay.’
The name of the eloquently speaking man is Valery Poshtarov, a photographer and one of the very few people left of his kind. A person born to capture, create, and provoke — to bring people closer to the world, but also closer to themselves.
I later realize this spontaneity is very much in line with his style.
“I like going naked and barefoot out there in the world,” laughs Valery “to meet people with no plan, to let my path take me places.”
Valery’s medium of expression is photography which he uses as a pretext to explore the world and get surprised by it, to find himself in the world, to justify his existence. He has never seen art as a mere form of beauty — through the artistic forms of expression, he explores a variety of topics, places, and problems to which he would never gain access, was it not for art.
He tackles his subjects similarly to a scientist — he doesn’t have a preconceived thesis, but dives in an exploration.
In his photography, Valery uses an unconventional form of participatory photography in which instead of giving his subjects cameras with which they would capture their lives in first person perspective, he gives them a role.
“This role is actually very familiar to them, yet it turns out to often be neglected and ignored — to come out on the stage of their own lives and to hold the hand of the person beside them.”
This is, simply put, the context of his latest photography project Father and Son in which fathers and their sons from all over Bulgaria hold each other’s hands before Valery’s lens.
“Fatherhood is a very underexplored concept in art, despite it being one of the most universal human conditions,” says Valery as he explains the depths and breadths of the project.
Finding fathers and sons willing to pose in front of his camera, however, has proven to be a challenge, especially in the beginning, when he mostly found his subjects by chance — out on the street. Valery explains that “despite the obstacles, these challenges give me a lot — a lot of smell — it is very physical and sensory — they provoke me to enter a zone in which I’m uncomfortable, push my senses.”
A lot of Valery’s subjects refuse to hold hands since “to hold someone’s hand means accepting them.” Photographing older sons and their fathers provokes them to accept each other despite the differences they might have. “[Accepting] is a huge challenge, not only in relation to our human relationships, but also in relation to the world. This is my personal path with this project — to learn how to hold the world’s hand, truly.”
Valery is looking for authenticity. Authenticity which manifests itself in a form of inner radiance. To reach that depth of sincerity, Valery often needs to break barriers, take people out of their protective shells and “win their trust, which requires you to bow down to your subject.” He doesn’t try to erase himself from his photographs but become one with the world in them — that’s when he feels like himself the most. He laughs as he says that and adds “this is often paradoxical, as I am almost two meters tall and [blending in] often requires a lot of effort […] but this comic scene in which I’ve taken the shape of a weird letter trying to take the photograph, often helps my subjects accept the act of photographing and turns the process into a beautiful interaction.”
Valery is often walking on a very fine line trying to capture the authenticity in his subjects. The concept in Father and Son requires him to pose the people he photographs. Pose, or ‘поза’ in Bulgarian, has a double meaning — one is the position of the body, the other is falsity. It took Valery years to understand and accept the role of the pose.
“There are some poses we, consciously or subconsciously, adopt trying to bring forward an image of ourselves […] when I see it happen, I usually interfere and break that balance replacing it with vulnerability. This places people in a position in which they no longer look at themselves as if looking in a mirror, I’m trying to avoid this falsity at all costs.”
He considers most of his attempts to capture authenticity a failure, but recognizes the value in those failed attempts, because even those images have an integral part in the bigger picture.
It is this pursuit of authenticity that made him stick to documentary photography, which he sees as the true manifestation of that authenticity.
“The line dividing fiction from reality is extremely thin. In documentary photography, we are confined to reality — we are prisoners of reality. […] dressing the content [of that reality] with visual dialectic is what convinces the audience of the importance of the content.”
I can’t see Valery’s expressions, but I also don’t feel the need to, because his passion is almost tangible — it spills from his mouth right onto my desk. As he paints the portrait of his art for me, Valery makes me a participant in his world of miniatures, photographs, and philosophies. I can almost physically feel his dedication as he walks me through his vision for the project and its future shape.
Father and Son is currently funded by the National Culture Fund and intends to constitute of 28 portraits taken in the 28 regions in Bulgaria. Valery admits the project has completed that task long ago, yet he believes there’s still so much to be explored. The project, which he has no intentions of limiting, is perpetual in its essence and transcends the borders of time.
“I believe in the dreams that can’t be fulfilled, they have no end goal, they’re a process. […] To be an artist, to create, is to allow yourself to fail,” says Valery.
His previous project The Last Man Standing in the Rhodope Mountains lasted 14 years and extended to 985 villages spread across the mountains. Valery found shelter in a world bound to disappear, he saw the destruction as it was happening. He reminisces of his years spent in the different villages with few or no inhabitants and recalls the moment he realized his true calling.
“At some point I reached the mountain of Orpheus and found a new reading of the myth. […] As Orpheus turns to look at Eurydice, he turns back to the past, ultimately losing the future. I realized how through all these years I myself have been a naïve Orpheus looking too much into the past, photographing exclusively in black and white, rejecting change.”
Valery later realized that the only way forward is through movement and change. He now sees change as a force that makes you dance, urges you to keep your balance as if standing upright on a boat. “You’re dynamic and so is the world,” he adds.
“[Photography] is not a mere phenomenon, it’s a language which contains the terminology of our time — we often understand the world through the language and the mirror which we put in front of it. Thanks to that [aspect of photography] we find the issues and challenges dominating the world we live in, which is buried in visual content; it prompts us to ask ourselves what is truly important.”
There is a surreal aspect to the conversations I had with Valery. I am filled with hope. Hope that there is someone who cares, someone who captures meaning, creates meaning, someone who nourishes the world in disguise, in silence. Valery has the voice of an artist who provokes with his creative visionary.
My notebook is no longer empty.
Alis Sandalova is a third-year student at the American University in Bulgaria. She explores the world through the lens of the people who shape it.
