Captured during the “Building a Visual Narrative” workshop (September 9–12, 2025), led by Thomas Dworzak, Iva Sidash, and Alan Chin, this project explores the theme of the euro and its imprint on people’s everyday lives. The workshop aimed to refine our skills in crafting photographic narratives—a photo essay grounded in real stories.
For my project, I focused on the Shopaka industrial zone near Primorsko, a place where Europe feels both near and distant. More than a cluster of warehouses and shops, it is a landscape where construction hypermarkets coexist with family homes, workshops, and car repair garages. Life here flows between local traditions and European aspirations.
Long working days, defined by labor, intertwine with holidays that revive the rhythm of older times. In one yard, you might hear the song of a sacrificial pig; in another, conversations about the euro and the hope for a more stable life.
This photographic narrative captures the tension between tradition and modernity, between the lev and the euro, between city and countryside. The faces you see belong to people living “almost in Europe,” yet firmly rooted in their own land – a testament to how the new world intertwines with the old.
