Balkan echo 20^th century: sounds and portraits from Bulgaria. This is the title of an exhibition of black and white documentary photography taken 50 years ago in Bulgaria and another six Balkan countries. The powerful photographs are on display until 17 November at the National Art Gallery (the palace) in Sofia.

In hundreds of metres of photographic film and audio recordings, an ethnographer from US has preserved, for the generations, the last authentic shots of Bulgaria from the 1960s and 1970s.

“The photographs take us back to a time long gone. They speak louder than many of the archives or documents,” said Vice President Iliana Yotova under whose patronage the exhibition is taking place. All of the 73 shots selected and put on display are by Martin Koenig.

But who is Martin Koenig?

At the beginning of the summer of 1966, a young American arrived in Bulgaria filled with a thirst for the authenticity of the ethnic and musical culture of Southeastern Europe, of which little was known in America. At the time Martin was dance instructor at Barnard College in Columbia University in New York. He came to Bulgaria with a letter of recommendation addressed to “whom it may concern.” One of the recommendations in the letter, presenting his mission in this country, was by a Bulgarian émigré doctor living in the USA. Martin met him as a patient of his, but it turned out he was Zhivko Angelushev, brother of the famed artist Boris Angelushev.

That was how the Angelushev home was to become the starting point of Martin’s journey to Bulgaria. Boris Angelushev brought the young man from America into his circle of friends, among them poet Valery Petrov and artist Hristo Neykov. In the time from 1966 until 1979 Martin Koenig came to Bulgaria six times and collected invaluable sound portraits which he has kept to this day. During one of his visits, at the festival in Koprivshtitsa, he heard Valya Balkanska sing.

Martin is one of the people who founded the Centre for Traditional Music and Dance in New York – an organization which has given its support to every ethnic group for the preservation of their cultural heritage for 38 years. He has helped make several documentaries, release gramophone records, two of which with recordings from Bulgaria. One of these records features the song Izlel e Delyu Haydutin performed by Valya Balkanska and bagpipe players Stefan Zahmanov and Lazar Konevski. Martin Koenig remembers how the recording was made in a classroom in a school in Smolyan. Later, this song from the Rhodope folklore region was included in the Golden Record launched into space on board the Voyager 1 and 2 in 1977 as the Earth’s musical message to the galaxy.

Parallel with the sound recordings he made on site, during his “Bulgaria” project, Martin took hundreds of black and white shots of Bulgaria, but also Romania, Greece and Yugoslavia using a photographic and a 16 mm. camera. One of them is a photograph of Valya Balkanska from the time when the legendary recording was made.

Now Martin Koenig is back in this country, this time to share his reminiscences of a Bulgaria long gone, and to meet some of the people who were involved in his ethnographic mission.

Gergana Mancheva