Stanislava Georgieva
Photographer
Stanislava Georgieva is a Bulgarian born photographer who completed her Bachelors degree in Fine Arts with a Photography major from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in May 2010. Her current work involves a look at gender through the exteriors of strip clubs currently found in New York and the Northeast, as well as portraits of Bulgarian men who are employed mainly in the financial sector of Manhattan. She has won photography awards from the Robin Forbes Memorial Award, New York Photo Award 2010 (NY Photo Festival) for Best Personal work in Photographic series with the work ‘Nomads’, The Rhodes Family Award for Outstanding Achievement in Photography, and while attending the School of Visual Arts she was nominated for the Tierney Fellowship in Photography.
Stanislava’s studies began in Bulgaria studying Art History at The National Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia. Upon moving to the United States in 2002, she completed an Associate Degree in Commercial Photography from LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, NY. Her fine art work led her to SVA where she has continued to use photography as a tool of expression. As artistic influences, she admires the fiction of Milan Kundera and the films of Alfred Hitchcock as well as the photographic and fine art work of Salvador Dali, Gregory Crewdson, and Robert Frank. She completed a Photo Editing internship at NBC Universal in 2009, which fallowed with a freelance position as a production assistant and a photo editor for Bravo TV, USA and the SyFy Networks.
In the summer of 2008, Stanislava spent two months taking photographs in Bulgaria, creating a body of work entitled ‘Past in Present’ which is an exploration of her memories of her homeland. This work deals with identity in a personal and historical way as she sees things that were once ordinary to her but which now look exotic. A new understanding of “the other” emerged from this work, and these memories and locations have proven to be seminal to her photography and vision. Her next project, ‘My Unfamiliar Face To You,’ upon returning to the U.S. dealt with a duality or persona of another person who acted as a surrogate for her. This woman assumed the role of an immigrant who lives in transition from her life as a wife and a parent. It is a more personal exploration of documenting a journey from her daily routines to her life outside of domesticity.
Stanislava Georgieva has exhibited her work ‘My Unfamiliar Face To You’ in New York City in a group exhibition entitled ‘New New Yorkers’ at the Judson Memorial Church in 2009. As reflected in this show, a statement by Stanislava is that “our likeness allows me to express the subversive identity duality that we all carry within ourselves. Forever bound to be the tourist, all the moments that the ‘she’ lives through become a divide between the two personality types, two possible worlds to inhabit, two perspectives of seeing the future and ultimately two ways of defining who ‘she’ is and where she actually ‘exists’. ” Her most recent exhibition, ‘Theaters of Prey’, a collection of photographs of strip clubs’ exteriors in residential and suburban areas, was shown at the School of Visual Arts in February 2010. In March, she debuted ‘Nomads’ in the ‘Mentors Show’ in the Visual Arts Gallery in Chelsea which was mentored by Daniel Power from powerHouse Books.
As a young person growing up in a Communist regime, Stanislava experienced the time between the collapse of Communism and the rise of Democracy. In a parallel manner, her photography reflects transitional issues as it focuses on the transformative journey that immigrants have when living in another country. She is able to view America as an outsider, yet she is at home both here and in the Balkans. Her work also has an existential feel, which is informed by these issues of acculturation.