Elitza, you‘ve been working as a photographer in Berlin for some time. You were born and raised in Bulgaria. You studied art and cultural studies at Berlin‘s Humboldt University and later worked for a long time as a graphic designer. It doesn‘t sound like a straightforward path. Have images always been important to you?

Images have accompanied me my entire life. I was fortunate enough to grow up in an art- loving house in Sofia, where – despite the socialist economy of scarcity – there were art albums, books, and conversations about art. As an art history student in Berlin, I learned to analyse images. As a graphic designer, I had to interact with other people‘s photos and my own. As a photographer, I often find myself standing in front of my many photos and have to make a selection, evaluate them, and choose the best ones.

When did you discover photography?

I took my first course at the adult education centre in Berlin at the age of 18 and then set up a lab for analogue black-and-white photography. Unfortunately, photography remained only latent in my life for a long time. I can‘t describe it, but somehow I was afraid to fully im- merse myself in it. During my studies, I pursued it as a hobby, then as a freelance journalist, I illustrated my newspaper articles with my photos, later – as a graphic designer – I used my photos in projects, and finally, I enjoyed documenting my children‘s development… but for a long time, I couldn‘t fully commit to photography.

That changed when I started dancing at the age of 40. Through dance, many blockages disappeared, and many dormant life projects emerged. Personal contact with dancers and participating in their work also inspired me to intensify photography. It was clear to me that at my age, I wouldn‘t reach great heights as a dancer, but that I could certainly live out my fascination for dance and movement through the camera. I developed my skills in dance photography and experimented with a wide variety of photographic techniques.

After my first exhibition, "Fascination Movement," in 2020, I was confronted with the question of whether I wanted to continue practicing photography as a craft or work more artistically. Well, the latter is more my style.

Why did you choose photography as a medium of expression?

My mind was always full of images. Even as a child, I spent long evenings in bed with my eyes closed, imagining, producing images, and arranging the world the way I wanted it to be. I also loved painting and drawing, but I‘m very impatient and need a faster medium to realize my ideas. In addition, I‘m particularly interested in fragile and fleeting states, such as movement, water, and lighting. With a camera, I can give permanence to the ephemeral.

I believe, if you approach the topic from a depth psychological perspective, photography was a remedy for a great fear of loss within me. This fear arose when I came to Berlin in the 1980s, when an entire world—Bulgaria—was lost to me. But the universal human fear of our transience also plays a role here. For me, the camera is a kind of magic wand that allows me to control time and, if I wish, stop it.

In my exhibition "Time - Structure“ (2024), I illustrated this phenomenon using motion photography – with short exposure times, I freeze time; with long exposures, I show the traces of movement and duration; with multiple exposures, I demonstrate simultaneity; and with stroboscopic effect photography, I dissect the moment into fragments and capture them in a single image. I accept the challenge of depicting movement and allowing it to continue to have an impact through a static medium like photography.

Nevertheless, the fear of loss and transience is not the only driving and determining factor in my photography. It is also a great joy to capture transformations and changes. In my series „Berlin as a Water Reflection,“ I photograph the "eternal“ buildings on the Spree—the palace, the cathedral, the Pergamon Museum, etc.—in diverse variations and appearances as transient water reflections. And in dance images, such as "In the Flow of Time,“ I capture traces of movement—unique moments that no one else has seen or can see.