The Burlesque in Which We Live

06.07 - 15.07.2011
Special Selection of the Seven Editions of PHODAR Biennial International Photo Festival
Opening: 06.07.2011 at 18:30
The Red House Culture and Debate Center, Gulliver Hall and Pesha Nikolova Hall

Our modern life has increasingly become a Reality Show: everything that happens is dramatically true yet allows for the inner perception of a badly concealed Soap Opera directorship – from natural disasters to the absurdity of war, chauvinism, communications and… of course, the media who invest quite an effort to enhance this format of world perspective after the advent of Marshall McLuhan's "The Medium is the Message" quote. The photographers presenting this collection feature diversity both in stylistic approach and venue of the event: Chernobyl (20 years later), Auschwitz Death Camp, Macedonia, Columbia, Serbia, St, Petersburg, Iraq, the USA, Sweden, Greece. They are united by their authors' aspiration to reach to the human and social dimensions of the topic they present, sometimes – through the ascetic force of a document or through profound humanistic contact with the persons involved. As if we are talking about the same things we see on the screen, yet… there they are a bit more accessible, understandable, moreover, not that apocalyptic, "unbearably light of being", if we are to paraphrase Milan Kundera.

This selection, among other messages, represents the values which PHODAR Biennial stands for: moral, ethic, artistic values of the ever renewing Modern Photography language.