EXHIBITION “BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE PHOTO ARCHIVE OF HACHIK LEBIKYAN
Opening: April 08, 2025, 6:00 PM
08 – 20 April 2025
The Graphic Aphorisms of Hachik Lebikyan
There is only one art that gathers plot, context, information, idea, suggestion and emotions in an instant. In just one instant, less than a second – as long as the blink of an eye!
This art tells stories. It is like a graphic aphorism – a minimalist form with great messages.
This is photography – a meeting at the intersection between reality, the moment, curiosity, culture and the author’s imagination.
Photography is also a time machine – it reminds us of what we were, what changes have occurred with us and around us, how, for example, buildings were created, which subsequent generations take for granted, as if they had always been in their places. Or how they are destroyed.
Photography – but not the photos for the family album – is a sharing by those who see. Because everyone looks, but few see the important moment from the best angle, with the right light and with great impact.
Photography paints the colorful mosaic of life, even when it is black and white. Or especially then. Because for expression and suggestion, one relies not on colorful images, but on the colorful idea of the author.
It is precisely such a mosaic that the black and white works that the journalist, author of brilliant aphorisms, researcher of the history of Ruse and public figure Khachik Lebikyan shares in this exhibition draw. Some of them have already been published in the newspaper “Utro” with their story in a special column, which continues, and here you see them together – a wonderful opportunity that will make you smile, think, sigh, ask yourself different things, and also answer the silent questions of the images.
Mladen LYUBENOV
HACHIK LEBIKYAN was born in Ruse on September 14, 1945. He worked for twenty years as a designer at Mashproekt. During this time, he published materials in the Ruse newspaper “Dunavska Pravda” and in the central press: the newspapers “Trud”, “Narodna Mlazed”, “Puls”, “Anteni”, the magazines “Nasha Rodina” and “Otechestvo”. He has been collaborating with the newspaper “Starshel” since 1982. His aphorisms are also published in the Serbian satirical magazines “Aforizam” and “Yezh”. The Anthology of Bulgarian Aphorisms “Thorn and Rose” in Serbian, published in Belgrade in 2019, contains about 70 of his aphorisms. Hachik Lebikyan also participated with his works in the Anthology of Armenian Aphorisms “Near Distance” in 2023 in Serbian.
From 1992 to 1997 he was a photojournalist in the newspaper “Utro”, where he wrote numerous articles on historical topics. After that, he worked in the newspaper “Information Market”, collaborated with the magazine “One Week in Ruse” and the magazine “Pristan”.
He participated in scientific conferences and has publications in the scientific journals “Almanac for the History of Ruse” of the All-Bulgarian Committee and the “Vasil Levski” Foundation and “Izvestiya” of the Regional Historical Museum – Ruse. Since 2007, he has worked as a tour guide at the Regional Historical Museum. He has published numerous books with aphorisms, as well as a number of his local history studies.
With his first few short films, in the early 1970s, he was awarded for them by the Ruse Eight. At the Third Photo Contest of the OP “Ruse Art” “Preserve the Spirit of Ruse” (2016) he was awarded a Diploma from the Society of Journalists in Ruse, at the Union of Journalists in the “Reportage Photography” section, and in 2018, at the Fifth Photo Contest he was awarded Third Prize. He participated in the exhibition of Armenian master photographers from the Ruse photography school, which opened under the patronage of H.E. Mr. Armen Sarkissian, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Armenia to Bulgaria in 2020 at the Art Gallery. He is the winner of the “Ruse” 2019 Award in the “Literature” category.
