Visual Project Management | Grant Work: Democracy + Communism: 3. Cuba + Bulgaria, in Layers: Paskova_Yana_006

A bakery features a portrait of Cuba president Raúl Castro in the port city of Mariel, Cuba -- and a married couple poses for a picture under a portrait of former Bulgarian Communist dictator Todor Zhivkov. Zhivkov was the Totalitarian head of state of the People's Republic of Bulgaria from March 4, 1954 until the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall, November 10, 1989, when he resigned under political pressure over the country's worsening economy, human rights repression, and public unrest. Fraying family pictures from pre-1989 Bulgaria inspired this portion of a long-term project on Democracy + Communism. The parallels between them and photos I'd taken in present-day Cuba surface best when juxtaposed — one image layered on top of the other. And so, I attempt to bridge one country’s past to another country’s present — to show that political ideals, its profiteers and its victims, can remain unchanged by time or geography.

A bakery features a portrait of Cuba president Raúl Castro in the port city of Mariel, Cuba -- and a married couple poses for a picture under a portrait of former Bulgarian Communist dictator Todor Zhivkov. Zhivkov was the Totalitarian head of state of the People's Republic of Bulgaria from March 4, 1954 until the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall, November 10, 1989, when he resigned under political pressure over the country's worsening economy, human rights repression, and public unrest.  

Fraying family pictures from pre-1989 Bulgaria inspired this portion of a long-term project on Democracy + Communism. The parallels between them and photos I'd taken in present-day Cuba surface best when juxtaposed — one image layered on top of the other. And so, I attempt to bridge one country’s past to another country’s present — to show that political ideals, its profiteers and its victims, can remain unchanged by time or geography.