Transitional Newspaper

transitional newspaper (newspaper to watch) is the first edition of five thematic issues, 32 pages each with a circulation of 100 copies.

The five issues are entitled: Number One: Daily Issue; Number Two: Festive Issue; Number Three: Street Issue; Number Four: Emergency Issue; Number Five: Fantastic Issue.

The publication is based on rephotographed pages of archival issues of periodicals from the Bulgarian press (some ceased to exist) dated from 1989 to the present, compiled on the basis of various thematic and formal criteria. The basic principle shaping the selection of images is that the photographs depict only people whose names we do not know, or people we label wrongly as “ordinary people” i.e. no public figures, no celebrities. 

The approach is experimental and tests the impact and communicability of photographic images disseminated by the press, when left without explanatory texts (headlines, article texts, image captions, etc.). In other words, the question transitional newspaper sets is: what do we understand, remember, or we can recover as an image of places and events from the recent past (i.e. the so called transition period that began in 1989 in Bulgaria) transmitted only by photographs. The transitional newspaper aims to make visible how, in what circumstances and to what ends the media depict “ordinary people” in photography.

The opening took place on 17.05.2016, 17:30 h, at the kiosk (Budka) on the corner of Boulevard „Dondukov“ and „Stara Planina“Str, Sofia.

transitional newspaper is not for sale, not to be given away for free, only to be used at the spot.

project idea: Krassimir Terziev
production assistants: Marina Genova, Martin Stratiev, Lora Todorova
print: Neoprint, Sofia
project by Goethe-Institut Bulgaria, part of the initiative BUD.KO
Initiators of BUD.KO are the Goethe-Institut Bulgaria, Za Oborishte Foundation, Transformatori Association, Bela Rechka
Festival / Nova Kultura , the ethnologist Kerstin Eckstein and Michael Schönhuth and the municipality of Sofia, Oborishte
district. Partner is the Kultursymposium Weimar 2016 of Goethe-Institut “Sharing and Exchange.