Born 1977 in Sevlieno, Bulgaria, Pepa Hristova now lives and works in Hamburg and in Berlin. She studied Communication design with a focus on photography with Prof. Ute Mahler, at the Hamburg University for Applied Sciences. Pepa Hristova has worked on eastern Europe in a number of series, mainly depicting the Muslim-Turkish minority in Bulgaria, as well as Albanian women, who due to an age-old tradition haven taken on male identities. → Pepa Hristova is a member of the Ostkreuz agency. In 2009 she was awarded the Otto-Steinert-Award for Subjective Photography. In 2010, among other distinctions, she received the Grenzgänger Stipend of the Robert Bosch Foundation.
www.pepahristova.com
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In my photography, the universal topic is the question of identity. As a Bulgarian living in Germany I am greatly interested in social phenomena, which elude the western set of values, and in loss of identity. I frequently search for questions related to the country I was born in, and to the region. To me, that is a way of confronting my roots. The distance I've created by living in Germany has opened my eyes for a range of issues and problems concerning my origin, which I had previously been blind to. → My photography focuses on the essence and on the motional world of the individuals depicted, as I subjectively perceived it at the time. I consciously shift between a variety of genres. Snapshots alternate with obviously staged photographs, intermixed with pictures from family albums, serving to reinforce the state I'd like to show. All of this takes place in a political and social context, which I am confronting on an emotional level, and which I aim to narrate on several levels, with my photography.
