Post Sofia: Stoyan Sertev

An Epoch in Black & and White 
@ National Museum of Bulgarian visual Arts 
10 October - 10 November 2013
DPhoto

Stoyan Sertev was born in Nova Zagora. He had played the violin since his childhood and at the age of about 20 he left for Sofia, where he made his living by playing in restaurant bands and by recording sound for silent films in cinema halls. Due to the lack of money he could not graduate from the Musical Academy but he had free lessons with Hristo Petkov, the father of the conductor Dobrin Petkov. In the musical milieus the name of Stoyan Sertev is connected with the National Opera orchestra and with the rich artistic history of the famous in the near past “Lechev” and “Avramov” quartets, where he played second violin. In his free time he was involved in photography - a passion of his since his adolescence, when he made his own camera out of a tin with a hole drilled in it, instead of lens. He made his first attempts, collected in an album, following German recipes for toning photographs. His huge archive has kept hundreds of frames from 1939 till the end of his life. He mainly shot works of art and their creators, architectural projects, theatrical and opera performances. 
LINK National Art Gallery