FMP - WIP - image selection - part 1 - why I chose old Sofia

Image selection proved out to be one of the most difficult things in the whole FMP. The reasons were several - too many images to choose from, too little images to choose from, weird angles (I love the air photos but since I do not have the license to fly a drone, or do not own one, for that matter, those were impossible to re-photograph). 

Another obstacle was the very history of Sofia itself - in the XIX and the beginning of the XX century the place looked much different from the modern city center and very few buildings have remained from that period (thanks to the Anglo-American bombings in March 1944 and the subsequent large-scale demolition of the totalitarian regime in the late 1940s). I totally had no interest in photographing Communist architecture, even though there is pretty much to be found around the city. 

My motivation for not doing this was that those buildings have not changed that much for the past decades and if the are has been changed, it is most probably unrecognizable in the picture. Such were the cases with the National Palace of Culture (see below) - maybe one of the ugliest buildings in Sofia altogether - and the so-called Triangle of Power complex in the city center that was built where the old trade streets one stood. 

the National Palave of Culture complex in it full ugliness, seen from the air,
Source: http://ndk.bg/news/predstoyashti-sabitiya-v-ndk-fevruari-7272-1

I didn't want to honour the monuments of a regime that did its best to eradicate what was left of royal Bulgaria and the culture of the Third Bulgarian kingdom. To some extent, the architecture of the Communist era has some kind of a charm of its own but to me it is totally unsuitable for a re-photography. The totalitarian regime was in power for 45 years in Bulgaria and throughout that time all of its creations have been tended with great care. Hence, for the 30 years that followed, there had been enough time for the buildings to age enough (with a very few notorious exceptions) or for the urban landscape to significantly change. 

I wanted to explore a time long lost with the first bombs of WWII - the Sofia of my great-grandfathers. That Old Sofia with looked like the small Vienna of the Balkans, which went to the theater on Friday evening and which had trade relations with half the world. A land of opportunities and exquisite architecture executed by the best of the best architects from Austria, Italy and France. 

I have a fascination for such buildings - the ones built at the end of the XIX and the beginning of the XX - with their ornaments, curvy facades and elaborate plan. Before the utilitarianist and modern XX architecture kicked in.