The Small Exhibitions BEHIND THE RED CURTAIN

Art Gallery Serdica presents Izabela Manolova and her photographs in “The Small Exhibitions BEHIND THE RED CURTAIN”. “It is not exactly a photo exhibition”, Izabela Manolova says, pointing out that there is something else in the monochrome photos of her works. “Something that is hidden around the corner of every consciousness. Something that is always there, and we do not know what it looks like. These are more than photos. These are souls. Souls frozen at the time of creation. If we look closely enough we can see ourselves at some point – the prism will break and everything will become infinity. Pieces of souls scattered in universes.”

“The Small Exhibitions BEHIND THE RED CURTAIN” are the evolution of the author’s project “Behind the Red Curtain”. Photographs and digital collage created in the last two years will be presented. Through the techniques of digital collage, looking at behind-the-scenes photography acquires new images, new content. Everything starts to look like itself. Everything returns to its own beginning.

The “Backstage Photography” movement, founded by the American portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz, is known for its approach to embodying the artist’s personality in his/her stage character. Through this technique, monochrome photography succeeds in embodying what is happening behind the scenes – the process of making and structuring a performance in what is in front of them, i.e. the visual point of view of the audience.

“The truth is in the eye of the beholder”. It is this very quote that is the magic key to looking at the photographic images presented in monochrome to the viewer that create a sense of closeness to the behind-the-scenes process. The technique for making this type of digital collage is based on the Thatcher effect or Thatcher illusion, or “Eyesmouth-Wrongway”, a phenomenon where it becomes more difficult to notice changes in the characteristics of an inverted face, although identical changes are obvious in the upright face. The technique is named after the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in whose photo the effect was demonstrated for the first time.

The effect was originally created in 1980 by Peter Thompson, a professor of psychology at York University. The illusion creates an approach through which we may look at the foreseeable in a new way. The technique developed through monochrome photography allows us to look at the image under a prism close to ours. A parallel reality that exists somewhere out there, in the consciousness of each of us.

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