Les images dont je suis en quête représentent des portraits et des moments de la vie des gens faisant partie à la fois d’un monde très particulier, celui de la Bulgarie, et à la fois un monde qui est le notre, celui du 21eme siècle. Le projet « W-Double V(ie) » est né d’un désir de présenter en dyptique deux instants de vie saisis à des moments différents, pour lesquels le temps semble intemporel. A chaque retour dans mes terres natales, je redécouvre les mêmes gens, les mêmes instants, les mêmes murs en béton…et le temps ne change pas. Et pourtant, demeure cette vie si sincère, cette folie, cette passion émanant de l’enfant au vieillard. Une vie et une autre, une même direction. Même amour pour son chat ou pour celui que l’on torture, même déguisement tantôt en soldat tantôt...

The archaic man believed that the mask represents divinity, the cosmological origin of terrestrial life and vision of primordial ancestors. Modern anthropologists, for their part, have shown that the mask to a psychological point of view is nothing else than the personal understanding what we personally appropriate and that we demonstrate, simply becomes a character and not only an actor in social life. So, each actor takes to the stage to play a specific role and the image he leaves to his audience, is the knowledge that in interpersonal broadcasts. Owning a mask recognized and validated by the public, is a rule among the most important for the establishment of the Self.

So, the social world becomes a complicated game: Each actor sees himself in the eyes of others and...

Don’t expect yourself to see townships or junkyards in Vladimir Vasilev’s pics. The ghetto is not made of unhealthy housings. It is not surrounded by concrete walls either. A ghetto is not tangible: it is above all an imaginary construction. But we still should amit the ghetto’s existence,because this one is haunted by human beings.

To understand this reducing, but few used term, Vladimir Vasilev borrows the only possible way: to follow and photograph the inhabitants of the ghettos. Because the life of a ghetto is its inhabitants and their own lives.
But does their life is a real life?

The cycle « The ghosts of the ghetto »tries to allude exactly to these problems. Vladimir Vasilev has photographed during one decade the disadvantaged populations in Eastern Europe...

Concrete city of Bulgaria's post-communist world - this is my homeland.

My wish was it should be shown as much as possible more real , such as it is – without any decor. Unfortunately it has still not changed too much. The unfinished transition to a European way of life and relationships that lasted decades , is a bitter reality , which could not be hidden - it is visible in the mind.

At the periodic returns to my native town, I constantly rediscover people - they still slow and painful break with the past and ... concrete. The concrete was converted into their fate and destiny, into their future for cheaper existence, far away off the normal life’s harmony.

In order to realize my idea, I traveled over Bulgaria and looked closely at their lives...