Oldal 118 [118]
OCR
Inclusion and Exclusion: Ihe Role of Photography in the Nation-Building Process in Bulgaria but the underlining of the Bulgarian sufferings during "the Ottoman Yoke" and the heroism of uprisings/revolts during the period of the Bulgarian Revival/Renaissance was imminent. The Bulgarian fight for freedom was interpreted as a sacred act of heroes, which showed that liberty was hard-fought and deserved.’ Modern memory relies on the visibility of the image (Nora 2010). In the creation of sites of memory—the so called lieux de mémoire—photography played an important role. With the establishment of the Bulgarian state in 1878, such places of memory were designated to mark Bulgarian nationhood.‘ Provisionally we could distinguish two main categories of sites of memory. 1. Places of martyrdom, of great suffering and sacrifice, such as the places of Bulgarian anti-Ottoman uprisings/revolts, especially the uprising in April 1876. The April uprising was a failure as a revolt, because of the lack of demographic, military, and other possibilities of success against the Ottoman Empire, which was still militarily resilient. But the rebellion showed that Bulgarians toiled under dire circumstances against it. The publicity that was given to the reprisals that followed the April uprising led to European demands for reform of the Ottoman Empire, and to the end of the RussoOttoman War (1877-1878). So the military failure turned into moral success and granted the Bulgarians the right to be free (see ill. 38). 2. Places of heroic victories in the struggle against the Ottoman Empire, such as the Shipka Pass, which achieved prominence during the RussoOttoman War (see ills. 33, 34). Lieux de mémoire were created by a complex interplay of individual and collective memory and institutionalized historiography (Nora 1999; Todorova 2009). To begin with, there must be a will to remember—both individual and collective. The process of establishing national sites of memory included the recollections and life experiences of living generations, and at the same time it concerned collective references to the past that are culturally determined and handed down through various media such as writing, pictorial images, and rites. The process of materialization of memory became centralized and institutionalized, whereby, state institutions took upon the lead. The centralized materialization of memory proceeded through the strategic highlighting of selected samples and multiplying examples. A repertoire of what might have had to be recalled was established. Liewx de mémoire and cultural memory have an abstract, often sacral, and solemn quality. As they are bound up with the identity of a group, their cultivation and transmission are not left up 3 This process started in the early 1880s. Under the most important authors, who became leading figures of Bulgarian political and public life, are Ivan Vazov, Zahary Stoyanov, and Stefan Stambolov, among others. 4 Maria Todorova offers a detailed analysis of the question of public, social, or collective memory; the nature of national memory in comparison to other types of memory; and the variability of memory over time and social space (Todorova 2009). 115
