“BANISHMENT” is a curatorial project by Diana Ivanova and Zeynep Zafer, featuring unique documentary photographs by Süleyman Akman and Behic Günalan—Turkish photographers who captured two waves of forced displacement of Bulgarian Turks from the country, in 1969 and 1989.

For the first time, this exhibition brings together in one space visual testimony of the forced assimilation, deportation, and ethnic cleansing carried out by the totalitarian regime in Bulgaria. The images presented are part of the project “Visual Archive of Assimilation”—an initiative whose mission is to collect, preserve, and show what was pushed out of public narrative and historical memory for decades.

“This exhibition is not an attempt to negotiate with the past. It is a resistance to forgetting.”
— Emi Baruh, Director of FotoFabrika

SÜLEYMAN AKMAN

A photographer born in Bulgaria, who himself experienced displacement as a child. In 1969, he documented one of the early expulsions of Bulgarian Turks. His photographs are being shown in Bulgaria for the first time.

BEHIÇ GÜNALAN

A photojournalist who worked for Hürriyet, documenting the summer of 1989—known by the cynical name “The Great Excursion.” His photographs from border railway stations and the roads to Turkey captured the largest ethnic cleansing in Europe since World War II.

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