Critical contextualization of my WIP - looking for style part 1: an unexpected discovery

Throughout the module it turned out that my biggest problem was not scope (unlike module 2) but style. How to create a style of my own that is different from the cookbook stock images I am used to creating. Honestly speaking, that proved to be a tough call and greatly hampered my work. To experiment (because that seemed the obvious route) one needs to be brave and step out of their comfort zone. However, I am not exactly the brave type of person and tend to love my comfort zone so the first thing I needed to do was some research. 

Most of the food stylists I was familiar with did more conventional style photography showing food as it was and I will write more about them since some of them had quite the influence on my earlier works - in a different post. I was in need of a different approach so tutors and colleagues turned out to be of great assistance. 

One of the first people I was refereed to turned out to be a Bulgarian. What makes the whole picture even funnier was that I hadn't heard her name (which is strange since I thought I knew at least by name all prominent Bulgarian photographers). But I knew nothing about that woman, Eugenia Maximova or her project, entitled Kitchen stories.

This sounded like a fascinating start since she, too, focused on the Balkans, just like mine. Here is what she said for an interview for Lensculture, describing why she started the project:

'The people of the Balkans live in the shadow of a long history of wars, conflicts and unresolved ethnic tensions. Much of the energy that could have gone into building a future has been squandered on maintaining those tensions and the result is an impoverished present.

Young families must either pay exorbitant rents or live packed like sardines in their parents apartments. And most of those apartments are in the hopelessly ugly, crumbling concrete blocks which are the legacy of the communist era.

The term Balkan whether it is describing a culture or a geographic area, usually has a strong suggestion of the rural with a heavy overlay of the Orient. In whatever context it is used, the word reverberates with cultural and sociological connotations, with a sense of division and disagreement.

When I set out to tell a story about the Balkans, it was food that sprang to mind as being the only thing people in the whole region agree that they have in common. After five centuries of Ottoman occupation we have all continued to eat the dishes they brought.

Thinking about this shared culinary heritage, I began to wonder what was happening in Balkan kitchens these days. The kitchen is a multipurpose room, a space which reflects identity and self-perception. It embodies the spirit of the Balkan home and mirrors society as a whole.

People in the Balkans would rather spend what little money they have in a cafe than on interior decoration. The functional, unadorned style which results from this conveys a tangible sense of the region’s lost identity, the inevitable legacy of half a millennium under the Ottoman yoke and half a century behind the Iron Curtain.'

So, she decided to use the kitchen space as a metaphor and means of expressing the way people on the Balkans live today. In Bulgaria and most of the other Balkan countries, the kitchen is the heart of the home - where most of the family life goes. The living room is reserved for special occasions or guests so most of the time people gather, do their daily tasks and even have their meals in the kitchen. Actually, I am writing this on the kitchen table as this is the room in which I do most of my work.

A house without the smell of freshly cooked food is considered ill-kept and 'dead' and a woman who cannot make a simple dish is deemed 'not good' to put it very mildly. Kitchens are usually the pride and joy of any wife, the 'feminine' corner of the house which is decorated and adorned. Sometimes, it is just out of the need to restructure the space but sometimes it is driven by the need to 'show off' to the neighbours. Still, the kitchen space is of pivotal importance to any Balkan home and Maximova does have a valid point that the state of the kitchen usually tells a lot about what is the general condition of the family and the space they inhabit.

What Maximova did was travel around Bulgaria and document the interior of the houses she visited focusing on how the interior functions as an augmented whole to create an overall impression. In her works, however, she focused much more on interior (what is IN the kitchen space and how it is actually used or how it functions together with the rest of the other tools to form a whole set of symbols) than on the actual food being cooked. 

Her images look like they have been taken out of a memory book with candid interior images of the home. They are surreal at times, the whole impression being almost dream-like and thus transporting the reader back to a time long-gone when all that mattered was to be allowed to get out and play in the yard or to get that longed-for waffle or bar of chocolate. 

Fig.1 - Eugenia Maximova - Interior from Kremikovtsi, Bulgaria 

To viewers that are part of this culture, these images evoke a certain sense of nostalgia. Not because the 1990s (in my case) were a wonderful time to be in Bulgaria (or any country on the Balkans) but simply because one tends to idealize all childhood memories, even the most mundane ones. 

I can heavily relate to all images I decided to post here - because they look as if they have been taken years ago at my own house. My mother used to have those ceramic spice jars (fig.1 above) which she inherited from my great-grandmother and they are still somewhere at the back of the spice drawer (and yes, we have a whole section full of different spices). The singer on the poster used to be a chalga star when I was a teenager and most of my classmates would adore her. 

Fig.2 - Eugenia Maximova - Interior from Gorno Drjanovo, Bulgaria 

 The image above (fig.2) also projects a vivid image from my childhood (and not only). That type of salami is one of the most popular breakfast 'dishes' in Bulgaria since during the Communist times it was presumed the best quality salami. Made out of raw dried meat, it is quite tasty and most Bulgarians would eat it with anything (I do, at least, even with pancakes). When I was a child this salami was a mark of prosperity (if you can put it on your table). The jar is actually full of yogurt - on the Balkans when we use the word 'yogurt' we mean something that is not sweet. When I was a child, my mother would make yogurt herself in jars like this - that was before the era of supermarkets and packed goods. So this is like a snapshot of my childhood life. 

The next image (fig.3) I saw literally shook me because it is so alike my grandmother's kitchen. As if I am a child again and can smell the chilly peppers she used to bake (an still does) on the hot plates. 

Fig.3 - Eugenia Maximova - Interior from Kostenez, Bulgaria 

This type of stove is called Rahovets and it marked a whole era during the Communist period. It is a local brand, probably sold only on the Balkans, and (according to my whole family) the best brand ever. My mother used to cook on the exact same model up till a few years ago and that machine worked for more than 20 years. 

The icon on the next image (fig4) is also a common sight in Bulgarian kitchens, especially if the place is inhabited by older people. 

Fig.4 - Eugenia Maximova - Interior from Ruse, Bulgaria 

The last image I selected (fig.5) struck me the most since we had absolutely the same tablecloth at home and that sight - of a table covered in this print and the jars and bottles transported me around 20 years back in time. I must have been six or seven when my mother took me to an open air market to buy a new tablecloth and I picked this one because of the animals. Then, for years on end I would stare at the pictures and imagine what it would be like to be in a fairytale wood surrounded by all those beautiful animals. I even tried to draw the animals printed on the cloth. 

Fig.5 - Eugenia Maximova - Interior from Kremikovtsi, Bulgaria 

What I love about Maximova's work is that she does manage to incorporate the cultural environment into her images. These interior shots look almost like still life images or abstracts but to me (and to many more Balkan viewers, I guess) they are not still life compositions but fragments of real life. Looking at her images, I do think that I can make some use of the props she depicts - like jars, spoons etc . - in my own images to add in some local flavour. I would really like to be able to transport the viewer into a different time and evoke as strong feelings as she does. 

Her images, however, are focused on the living quarters rather than the food itself so apart from that, even though her style is quite interesting, I cannot put into practice more of it and apply it to my own work. 

My biggest problem with her project is much more ideologically oriented - or in other words, related to the message she tries to send out to the world, especially to viewers that are out of this culture and are totally unfamiliar with its specifics. 

What I dislike about the whole project is the one sided view of the Balkans as backward and torn apart. As Maximova herself stated in the interview, her idea was to show the 'lost identity' as she puts it of the Balkan people. Being at the crossroads of Europe, the Balkan people have met with a pot of other invaders through the centuries but this doesn't mean they have lost themselves and their rituals in the process. On the contrary, I believe that a new identity was forged - something that combines bits and pieces from all peoples that mingled on the territory. That makes the people on the Balkans unique, not backward or lost. 

Hence her one-sided attitude and deliberate selection of old and withered kitchens really annoys me. As if she aimed at depicting Bulgaria as the poor neighbour that has been robbed and now crumbles. The nostalgia these images evoke for me will be turned into either dismay or disgust in the eyes of a Westerner. The author herself has studied and now lives in Vienna ever since her late teens - quite a stark difference from what it is like to live in Eastern Europe - so I guess that the attempt was totally deliberate as some ex-pats tend to forget where they come from and hence tend to regard everything related to their home country as 'backward' and 'falling apart'. 

I totally wouldn't blame the Iron Curtain or the Ottoman rule for the state of those places. These are just rural areas (all the places cited are actually villages or small towns) inhabited mostly by elderly people so that they see no reason to buy new appliances or lack the funds to do so. That is why the interior gradually deteriorates - the peeling paint and the withered prove it. But such a generalization is far-fetched, to say the least. 

So, as beautiful and thought-provoking her images are, I will be incorporating little of her style and idea into my works as my aim it at the opposite end of the spectrum. 

Sources:

Eugenia Maximova's website - Kitchen stories
https://www.emaxphotography.com/kitchen-stories-from-the-balkans
https://www.lensculture.com/articles/eugenia-maximova-kitchen-stories-from-the-balkans

List of figures: 

Figure 1 – MAXIMOVA, Eugenia - Interior from Kremikovtsi, Bulgaria, 2010
Available at: https://www.emaxphotography.com/kitchen-stories-from-the-balkans
[accessed 08 August  2018]

Figure 2 – MAXIMOVA, Eugenia - Interior from Gorno Drjanovo, Bulgaria, 2010
Available at: https://www.emaxphotography.com/kitchen-stories-from-the-balkans
[accessed 08 August  2018]

Figure 3 – MAXIMOVA, Eugenia - Interior from Kostenez, Bulgaria, 2010
Available at: https://www.emaxphotography.com/kitchen-stories-from-the-balkans
[accessed 08 August  2018]

Figure 3 – MAXIMOVA, Eugenia - Interior from Ruse, Bulgaria, 2010
Available at: https://www.emaxphotography.com/kitchen-stories-from-the-balkans
[accessed 08 August  2018]

Figure 5 – MAXIMOVA, Eugenia - Interior from Kremikovtsi, Bulgaria, 2010
Available at: https://www.emaxphotography.com/kitchen-stories-from-the-balkans
[accessed 08 August  2018]