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Bulgaria Through the Eyes of Foreigners During the 1960s a fingerprint (Bazin 2005: 15). Even when staged, the situations captured by camera would acquire the status of absolute truth; they would now have the authority of evidence and could confirm any textual content, no matter how remote from reality. “A very faithful drawing may actually tell as more about the model,” Bazin wrote, “but despite the promptings of our critical intelligence it will never have the irrational power of the photograph to bear away our faith” (Ibid.: 14). Thanks to its technical nature, which predetermined the absence of the distinguishable mark invariably left by the artist’s hand, in socialist society, photography was firmly established as the realist method of depiction. It was assumed that the camera had the ability to produce a truthful, objective, and unbiased image of the world. Photography became the metaphor for rational knowledge as separated from a subjective and imperfect sensory perception. To develop even further the notion of Bulgaria as an exotic destination, the advertising materials disseminated by the Balkantourist alone would not suffice. A periodic publication was also needed for the aims of propaganda, a magazine that would promote in words and pictures the country’s new image. Like neatly arranged shop windows, magazines “exhibited” visual evidence of the socialist state’s prosperity in an attempt to create a more attractive image of socialism for the public in Bulgaria, the USSR, and the rest of the world. In 1964, the magazine Resorts in Bulgaria began to be published in Bulgarian, English, German, Russian, and Esperanto. Richly illustrated, from the very beginning it featured sections like “As Visitors See Us”, “Books on Bulgaria’, “Foreign Press Comments on Bulgaria”, “Veni, Vidi, Scripsi”, “Tributes from Our Visitors”, and so on. Articles in these sections described a fantastic land of extraordinary nature and a remarkable population. In the advertising photos showing Bulgaria’s resorts, often we can see curious objects such as palms (which do not grow in the country due to the cold winter), lush vegetation (which is there but far less exotic than in the illustrations), and an abundance of fruit—peaches and apricots (traditionally grown) but also coconuts, bananas, oranges, and pineapples (which do not grow in Bulgaria, nor could be bought there) (Fig. 4). Elephants were never delivered, but one purposeful detail in the creation of an exotic image for the resorts were the camels, not only used as an attraction for tourists but also shown by photography while crossing the natural dunes of Sunny Beach as if they were on a long and tiresome journey across the desert (Figs 5 and 6). To all of the above one should also add the tourists’ impressions from the hospitality and erudition of the socialist citizens (represented as uncommunicative and cheerless beyond the iron curtain), which were published abroad and republished in the magazine Resorts in Bulgaria: “Coming into contact with the Bulgarian people is for every serious-minded Scandinavian a real revelation, something we cannot experience within the confines of our own borders,” wrote Heinrich Karlsson, a foreign journalist touring Bulgaria in 1963. “In buses, on trains and other means of conveyance Bulgarians attempt to converse with me in German, French, English or Esperanto, and that is how I made many interest541
