International Meetings of Photography 2023, Plovdiv
SOCIAL TOPOS
13 - 31 October

The International Meetings of Photography is an annual festival in Plovdiv with a 40-year long history. It traditionally opens on the second Friday of October for a weekend saturated with various photographic events - exhibitions, lectures, and presentations.
With its varied history, the festival has established itself as an international venue for the presentation of photography, a forum for discussion, and an incentive to seek alternative methods for discussing and exhibiting photography. But above all it is invariably a place where photography and people meet.
The 2023 Festival
Main theme SOCIAL TOPOS
The programme of the exhibitions covers topics starting from cultural theory to current socio-political processes in the wider European context. The photography festival will try to show the changes occurring in the world, provoking us to interpret them collectively. Images that we must not only see, but also imagine, while translating the complex visual language into meaningful connections between our everyday reality, the camera lens and contemporary art. Places defined by the economic, political, ideological or individual human norms are the thematic field of the artists who put in focus the human being living within or outside them.
In the exhibition programme we will see the toposes of solitary or collective presence, the private and the public in the context of perceiving the transience of the structures in which we exist.
Exhibitions from Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Denmark, Italy, Turkey, Hungary and France will be displayed in the newest spaces of the City Art Gallery and the houses in the Old Town of Plovdiv.
The International Meetings of Photography are organized by the Plovdiv Centre of Photography Foundation. The artistic director and curator is assoc. prof. Nikola Lautliev PhD, (b.1949) founder of the 'Graphic Design' and 'Photography' BA programs at Plovdiv Academy of Arts.
In 1983 was the beginning of his personal lifelong commitment to The International Week of Photography in the Old Town. The permanent exhibition venue was The House of Photography. It became a hotspot of photographic life in Plovdiv and the country and an attractive place for artistic and creative expression.
This photography event is the first international festival of photography in Bulgaria, which annually includes dozens of exhibitions, a plein-air exhibition and a theoretical seminar. Since 1993 this event has been revived under the name International Meetings of photography.
The overall concept of IMP is aimed at the creation and promotion of photographic art; at the promotion of discussions on trends in contemporary photography; at dialogue between different generations, at the discovery of new names in the field of photographic art, as well as fostering partnerships at national and international level.
The authors shown during these 40 years are more than 500 world-famous names from the history and modern times of photography and four generations of creators of Bulgarian art photography.
In 2023, the International Meetings of photography programme will be implemented with the financial support of the Municipality of Plovdiv, the National Culture Fund, the Singer-Zahariev Foundation and in cooperation with the Hungarian Cultural Institute and TOBE Gallery - Budapest, the Republic of Türkiye Consulate General in Plovdiv, Bulgaria and the Ara Güler Photography Museum - Istanbul, Photosynthesis, the Plovdiv City Art Gallery, the Ivan Vazov National Library, the Municipal Institute Ancient Plovdiv and Ramada Plovdiv Trimontium.
Media partners: "Pod Tepeto", "NULA 32" Magazine

Program:

Official opening of the festival:
13 October 2023 Friday 18.00
City Art Gallery - Kapana Gallery
29 "Raiko Daskalov" St.

Opening of the exhibitions and meetings with the authors:
October 13, 2023 Friday
18.00  – 20.30 
City Art Gallery - Kapana Gallery
29 "Raiko Daskalov" St.
Ara Güler, Turkey
Jacob Aue Sobol, Denmark

October 14, 2023, Saturday
10.30 - 12.00
City Art Gallery-Plovdiv / 15 Knyaz Alexander Batemberg St.
Reiner Riedler, Austria, 1st floor
Marco Rigamonti, Italy. 2nd floor

12:30  – 15:00
Balabanova Nouse, Old Plovdiv
57 Konstantin Stoilov St., Plovdiv
Máté Bartha, Deep Hall
Vladimir Vassilev, Vaulted Hall

17.00 – 18.00 
Hindliyan's house, Old Plovdiv
11, "Artin Gidikov"
Nikola Mihov

18.00 - 19.00
Balabanova Nouse, Old Plovdiv
57 Konstantin Stoilov St., Plovdiv
Music composition by Mark Barta

11.30 - 18.00
Balabanova Nouse, Old Plovdiv
57 Konstantin Stoilov St., Plovdiv
Platform PUK!
Tihomir Stoyanov
Rosen Kuzmanov
Nikola Mihov
Exhibition of photography books
October 15, 2023, Sunday

10.30 - 12.00
City Art Gallery, “Mexican Graphics” collection
Old Town Street, 11, "Artin Gidikov"
Rumen Koinov, Brazil

10.30 – 12.00 
Presentation by Ara Güler Museum Istanbul
City Art Gallery - Kapana Gallery
29 "Raiko Daskalov" St.

October 31, 2023, Tuesday
17.30 – 19.00
City Art Gallery - Kapana Gallery
29 "Raiko Daskalov" St.
Finishing of the festival
Presentation of the photo book of Prof. Nikola Lautliev "Amarcord"
with the participation of the guitar ensemble "Akademika" -
artistic director Prof. Dr. Stella Miteva - Dinkova.