Oldal 545 [545]
Bulgaria Through the Eyes of Foreigners During the 1960s
language. Its apprehension takes no time as it need not be contemplated: a single
glance is enough for the information contained therein to be grasped. And this was
also the aim of the authorities—to keep viewers on the surface of images, relying
on their sensory and emotional perception rather than on a logical and thorough
examination of facts. Those photos regarding which one is considerably more open
and trusting compared to other types of illustrations would far more quickly and
smoothly sink into the subconscious. This is how they became one of the most
meaningful and powerful agitation and propaganda tools developed and controlled
by the party.
A slightly different idea of how foreigners saw Bulgaria can be found in travel
guides written by foreign authors and published abroad.” Most Bulgaria guides
used government-approved illustrations from the Bulgarian State Photo Archive.
Some authors, however, opted to use their own pictures, thus avoiding the trap
of standard and predictable imagery. What mostly impressed them was not the
new, modern Bulgaria but the remains of the past and the oriental influences—all
themes that socialist photography deliberately ignored: mosques, elderly men and
women in national costumes, gypsies, basket makers, bear trainers, and so forth
(Figs 7 and 8). Compared to this, resort life seemed unreal and insular. The Red
Riviera presented itself to the world in a capitalist form (Neuburger 2013) but
with the inevitable socialist content. Seemingly human but not accessible to every¬
one; beautiful but full of conventions and hidden traps; posing as frivolous but in
fact constantly controlled and manipulated—teality and its image were dramati¬
cally inconsistent. The socialist authorities had the practice of using the credibility
of photography to create illusions that easily could be turned into truths. Unno¬
ticeably, many of the real, unattractive facts from the reality came to be replaced
by their more perfect images. Socialist ideology needed faith and confidence in the
realism of the photographic image. But this realism was not grounded in reality—it
was something better and far more perfect than reality. It was meant to inspire peo¬
ple and lift the spirit. An artist adhering to the directives of Marxist-Leninist aes¬
thetics would not reproduce the world as it was in the here and now. Every image,
photographic image included, should possess something more than the ability to
mechanically render the visible world; it has to also be endowed with an ideologi¬
cal spirit. It was not enough to merely capture the exploits of the new system with
a camera, because socialist photography was valuable not only as documentation
but also as a means to create and shape reality. I would say that we could compare
photography, in its attempt to meet the requirements posed by socialist realism,
to distorting mirrors. In front of the camera, people tend to act as if they were
standing in front of a truth-telling mirror. Then all of a sudden they realize that
what the mirror returns is an unreal image, showing them as something they know
they are not (Eco 1986). Looking at their own portraits, they become susceptible
° For instance, Bacs 1972; Chataigneau et. al. 1968; Jepsen 1967; Johnson 1964.
543