Silent River
Photography and idea: Eugenia Maximova
Graphic design: Andrea Popyordanova
Edition of 500
sewn, hard cover
2022
self-published
printed in Bulgaria
︎︎︎emaxphotography.com
photos of the book©Eugenia Maximova
Book design and layout for the photographer Eugenia Maximova’s project Silent River. The book is designed in close collaboration with Eugenia Maximova.
“On October 6, 2018, 30-year old television journalist Victoria Marinova was brutally raped and murdered in the Bulgarian city of Ruse. In broad daylight, the young woman went for a run by the Danube from which she never returned.
Applying an artistic as well as documentary approach, Vienna-based photographer Eugenia Maximova takes a walk around the city of Ruse and tells a tale about it. Marinova’s death may not have been politically motivated – in the wider sense it certainly is. In her ongoing photo project Silent River, Maximova addresses this larger socio-political context. In addition, she looks at the emotional repercussions because Maximova is also personally affected: the murdered journalist had been her sister-in-law and friend. Silent River thus seeks to raise questions as much as it documents a personal journey of grief and loss, of anger and despair. It positions itself explicitly against how mainstream media depict violence. Instead, Maximova captures elegiac views of the city of Ruse, empty spaces, many of which in a desolate state yet not without beauty. The project seeks to map out a subjective topography of the murder in that it follows not one but two trajectories: that of Victoria Marinova and that of her alleged murderer Severin K. as they both move through the post-Communist cityscape until their paths cross on the banks of the Danube. In doing so, a third trajectory emerges: that of the artist herself.”
Text from Eugenia Maximova’s website.
More about the book here.
“On October 6, 2018, 30-year old television journalist Victoria Marinova was brutally raped and murdered in the Bulgarian city of Ruse. In broad daylight, the young woman went for a run by the Danube from which she never returned.
Applying an artistic as well as documentary approach, Vienna-based photographer Eugenia Maximova takes a walk around the city of Ruse and tells a tale about it. Marinova’s death may not have been politically motivated – in the wider sense it certainly is. In her ongoing photo project Silent River, Maximova addresses this larger socio-political context. In addition, she looks at the emotional repercussions because Maximova is also personally affected: the murdered journalist had been her sister-in-law and friend. Silent River thus seeks to raise questions as much as it documents a personal journey of grief and loss, of anger and despair. It positions itself explicitly against how mainstream media depict violence. Instead, Maximova captures elegiac views of the city of Ruse, empty spaces, many of which in a desolate state yet not without beauty. The project seeks to map out a subjective topography of the murder in that it follows not one but two trajectories: that of Victoria Marinova and that of her alleged murderer Severin K. as they both move through the post-Communist cityscape until their paths cross on the banks of the Danube. In doing so, a third trajectory emerges: that of the artist herself.”
Text from Eugenia Maximova’s website.
More about the book here.
