PRIDE
2024 · Berlin
Pride is a curious phenomenon—a spectacle of freedom in places where it has been won, and a fragile act of defiance in those where it hasn’t. Coming from Bulgaria, a country where LGBTQ+ individuals are still denied basic safety and rights, I’ve seen how prejudice is institutionalized and how hatred is used to manipulate public fear. Laws like the 2024 ban on discussing non-heteronormative relationships with people under 18 reinforce this repression, erasing entire identities under the guise of tradition.
Photography offers a way to preserve the fleeting. It’s immediate, unfiltered, and unforgiving—a method to document what cannot be controlled. At Pride, my lens finds strangers I don’t know but somehow connect with. These images are fragments of a collective struggle, capturing fleeting moments of joy and resistance against a backdrop of intolerance.
In Berlin, Pride feels almost surreal—a kaleidoscope of expression that was unthinkable in the place where I grew up. For now, this series continues. I will stop photographing Pride when it no longer needs to exist as a protest, when freedom is universal and unquestioned. Until then, it remains a record of what is and a hope for what might one day be.
