Two Burgas photographers, Hristo Stefanov and Stanil Lazarov, are finalists in the national "Foto Akademika" review. Their joint exhibition at the Georgi Baev Gallery in Burgas will run from 17 November to 6 December 2026.

The show is called "Selected from Foto Akademika 2025 and 2026", with the subtitle "Series by the Burgas finalists". It is part of the annual "Photography Weeks – Burgas 2026". It sets the silence of a forgotten countryside against the noise of the modern city, and its common theme is time, space and memory.

"Foto Akademika" has reviewed Bulgarian photography every year for more than two decades. The Yanka Kyurchieva National Photographic Academy Association runs it. In recent years, judges have rated only finished series, not single shots, and they ask for a deeper treatment of the theme. The main categories are art photography and reportage photography.

In 2026, Hristo Stefanov won a silver medal in the "Reportage Photography" category. His series "Bulgarian Realism (Notes from the Bulgarian Villages)" shows unstaged winter landscapes of four dying villages in the region: Chernograd, Klikach, Kosti and Zvezdets. Because of the demographic crisis, there are no people in the pictures, and their absence is part of the idea. People appear through their traces: old inscriptions, crumbling buildings and schools. Animals act as "guardians".

In one village near Karnobat, Stefanov's arrival was an event. Locals came out to ask who the stranger was. An elderly man followed him in a car out of curiosity, then became his conversation partner and guide.

Stefanov has been interested in photography since childhood. He finished a finance degree in Svishtov, then went back to his native Burgas, drawn by the sea and the visual arts, and his hobby became his job. For more than four years he has been the official BTA photojournalist for the Burgas region, and he often takes part in shows by the Burgas Photographic Community. He believes photography is an art with artistic and moral value and should show what is beautiful.

In 2025, Stanil Lazarov received an honourable mention in the "Art Photography" category. His series "Parallel Race" is street photography: the city, the geometry of light, and shadows as silhouettes that run their "own race" with reality.

Lazarov was born in Dobrich but lives and works in Burgas. He teaches photography and is an active member of the Burgas Photographic Community. He began as an amateur and chose a professional path after training at PhotoSchool with mentor Milen Dobrev. "Foto Forum" has named him among its Top 100 authors in Bulgaria.

His first show, "The Beginning", was held at the same Georgi Baev Gallery. A year later, he returned there as a finalist.

The opening is on Tuesday, 17 November, at 6pm. The photographers will meet Burgas's cultural community and promise a personal talk about photography as both document and art. Entry is free.