First of all! I am not a photographer. I am – a Woman in photography!
There is a great difference between the Artist-Man and the Artist-Woman. For man it is a spiritual necessity, a masculine reproduction, a sexual and sensual expression… For me it was a way to survive! The only opportunity for my feminine nature to be realized, the only way to resist my impossible social life as a mother, a woman, an artist. During my whole life I have been chased by bad circumstances, leaving me no other alternative but to live my “real” life in photography. Unrealized motherhood, doomed love stories, impossible friendships – I inherited all of it as a feeling, striving to preserve my longing and to escape from desperation. Photography brought to me great pain and suffering yet, at the same time, only satisfaction. The feeling is likewise the feeling of a mother, looking at her grown-up children, satisfied with their success. Photography was and she still remains my Home, where I feel comfortable knowing what I give and what I shall obtain. A game, which I don’t play by myself but with a partner, always ready to surprise me.
Men are photographers and women are in photography. For men she is a way of feeling /sensing/ and existing in the world. For me it is a way of overcoming, enduring, reconciling – an opportunity to exist without being hurt; an opportunity for a choice – to be dead or alive; an opportunity to choose my life, my death, my love… For me photography isn’t what she is but another reality, in which I can exist freely, without inhibitions. To save myself from it, to free myself of it, to take it off me- like a dirty dress – and wash it. A monologue world, in which the sound of horror, desperation and disgust together with hope and belief in beauty, love and goodness in the world have created the drama of survival, where suffering turns into tenderness and longing. Yes, I have lived in solitude, which I have learned to fill in with myself and not to be afraid of what is my only ownership.
For men photography is a way to express themselves, while for me – to save myself. They are out of it, using her as a means, while I am in it – in the chemistry of creation. Without knowing what I am doing, I was just doing it. I wasn’t interested in how the process was developing, I just let it lead me. Like a blind man, who follows his sense of smell, trace by trace I was discovering the object of my inspiration in every technical mistake, in every compulsion, in the official orders and materials, thrown out of usage. I have learned to follow my impulses and my intuition, without asking myself questions. And when I didn’t have the opportunity to use a lab /I’ve never had my personal studio and a dark–room/, I was writing poems, drawing or making cards /which I usually presented/. In my poems I was analyzing myself, in my drawings I was trying to clean myself from my visions, while in photography I was drowning in images striving to gather myself piece by piece, like it is said: “part by part I am sowing my shabby soul”… I have always tried to escape from photography /she brought to me a lot of humiliation and pain/. But she has always led me “by nose” and never allowed me to turn aside from my way. And if for man she is a question of choice, for me she was Destiny, Karma through which I had to learn my life lesson.
Photography is not what she is. She is the third phenomenon – a subject, an object and She. In case there is a powerful interaction between the first two, She comes to be the result, which can never be foreseen. And actually it happens so that She is what she Is! Life is conceived out of a sexual intercourse! Now I realize her influence upon my personal development. Photographing myself in different moods, being absolutely sincere, I was simultaneously getting away and getting closer to myself, while She created a concentrated image /sign/ through which I could more easily realize and accept my life /its absurdity/. Instead of being mother and wife, I was a photographer! Nobody has ever asked me whether I want it or not. My innocent interest threw me into deep and dark waters and I had to learn how to swim and breathe. To me the childhood of my daughter was an unrealized fairy-tale, which I directed by myself in photographs. Men – as an object of my desires /longings/ I explored in love series, in which the most important was love /thus preserving it/. I personally took the pain and the disappointments, I anesthetized destruction and misery, not allowing them to take possession of me and ruin me. I created fairy-tales where I was “The Sleepy Beauty”, “The Unemployed Queen Waiting for a Retired Prince”. Gypsy Queens – fictions, in which I believed in the “happy end”. I materialized my feelings – from “seer” I turned into “interpreter”.
No, I am not an artist! I was just saving my skin in art – the only language, by which I could freely express myself. I let myself reflect my femininity in every woman /or girl/ – usually my woman friends. By photographing my daughter I experienced the whole motherhood, which I wasn’t able to give her. By photographing men, I expressed my entire love and admiration, which I never had back… I was like a soldier in wartime and there was only one certain thing – Photography was the winner. I was only a woman, doomed to Survive! No, it wasn’t an erotic experience. It was a death-and-life struggle! Pushed away from social life, I emigrated in Photography – I dug my place there – like a mole I blindly dug the tunnel, not knowing where it will lead me. It can be said that this is the place where I begin to see for the first time, I come out in light and see the world spread below. The inhabiting of the dark gave me the knowledge of world and light doesn’t frighten me, because you can easily learn to see but it’s difficult to leave it off…
I wouldn’t force you to believe in what I am telling you, but if the energy of what I have gone through touches you in a way, without affecting you, I would be really very happy! Thank God for the urge for life and happiness /which is one and the same for me/, thanks to which I have survived! For a long time I have prepared myself for this moment, to be with you! You are the audience I have dreamed of, and Hossoe-san is the Teacher I have longed for! It is never late to become a student, even if you are a teacher. Because there are always teachers, who are better than you are. It is now that, for you and in front of you, I “collected” myself again, realizing my wholeness. A process, which I have prepared for several years and my show in front of you is both the end and the beginning of a stage, important to me. End of self-pity and beginning of realizing my place in the world of photography /I would say entirely a man’s one/ where I am ready to stand up for my femininity. Therefore my gratitude to you as first spectators and to Hossoe-san /thanks to whom all this is possible now/ could not be expressed in a different way but through this deeply intimate confession and by its dedication: “To my Friend and Teacher Hossoe-sensei”. In addition: I couldn’t lead this conversation in my country. It is rather impossible, although I have received the decade’s award – which in Bulgarian mode means that it means nothing. A purely formal “recognition”, which doesn’t change at all my current social and artistic status.
Thank you! It’s me – Usha from Bulgaria! Nice to meet you!
19, 20, July, 2001