In the year when we celebrate 100 years since the birth of Lotte Michailova, the exhibition “The Return of Lotte Michailova: Shy Intimacy” will be arranged at the Nenko Balkanski House-Museum, a branch of the Art Gallery – Kazanlak. The exhibition was first presented by FotoFabrika in 2023 at the Sofia City Art Gallery, attracting enormous public interest.

The themes in Lotte Michailova’s work are connected with the woman, the mother, nature, and are presented with high photographic mastery and a recognizable black-and-white aesthetic. “Lotte Michailova does not narrate and does not explain—her photographs are emotionally provoked, in a rich palette of feelings,” wrote Georgi Lozanov about the photographer.

“These photographs are not a longing for what is lost, but a diary of what exists. Faces, environment, actions, trees, fog, landscape, and moments of wonder—framing of movement, observation from depth. A registering of the unbroken diversity of life in the form of a quiet visual confession without unnecessary words,” adds Stefan Ivanov.

The selection of photographs shown in “The Return of Lotte Michailova: Shy Intimacy” highlights the photographer’s gentle focus on detail, reveals a feminine sensitivity to human intervention in nature, and follows the traces we leave in the world around us.

Lotte Michailova was born on November 27, 1925, in Pernik. She worked as a photographer in the photo department of Sofia Municipality, at “Bulgarian Cinematography,” and at the Boyana Feature Film Studio. She was also a photographer and photo editor in the “Art Photography” editorial department of the “Interphoto” division at the Sofia Press Agency.

Her photograph “Nude” at the 2nd National Exhibition of Art Photography in 1963 became the subject of a clash between innovators and the conservative-minded jury, which initially rejected the work. Eventually, the photograph was admitted and awarded a gold medal. Beyond that, Lotte Michailova received over 40 more awards from national and international photo exhibitions, including two major prizes at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 1964. In the late 1990s, she settled in Germany, where she continued to actively take photographs until her death in 2014.

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