student project / photography exhibition

metaphorical reflections

2026

Photography Practicum

Engineering Design · TU Sofia

Tutor and curator: Emilia Ochkova-Dimitrova

The project began as an assignment in the Photography Practicum within the Engineering Design programme at the Technical University of Sofia. Its central question is: how can photography reveal something that is not immediately visible within the frame?

Here, metaphor is a mode of visual thinking. A reflection may be physical—in water, glass, light or shadow—but it may also reflect memory, emotion, presence, absence or a relationship. Each author develops a distinct visual language in which the visible points towards another, unseen meaning.

Metaphorical Reflections is an exhibition about looking: about moving beyond the obvious and discovering meaning in detail, juxtaposition and a shifting point of view.

Poster for the Metaphorical Reflections exhibition — Exhibition poster · 2026

authors and concepts

Eight positions between image and meaning

Aleksi Aleksiev

Bulgarian Summer

3 photographs · 50 × 50 cm · 2026

Abracadabra, Tailwind and White Silence return to the mouth of the Kamchia River as a place of memory and personal experience. The landscape is not merely observed nature, but a trace of summer, movement and silence.

Bulgarian Summer, photograph 1, Aleksi Aleksiev

Bulgarian Summer, photograph 2, Aleksi Aleksiev

Bulgarian Summer, photograph 3, Aleksi Aleksiev

Viktoria Vasileva

Echo

3 photographs · 50 × 70 cm · 2026

Body and nature merge, while human presence remains as an echo—recognisable and yet dissolved into its surroundings.

Emilia Ochkova-Dimitrova

Along the Edge of Thought I–III

black-and-white photography · 3 parts · 50 × 70 cm · 2026

Cut paper, light and shadow trace the boundary between matter and thought. ‘In the minute quantities of pain / within the great sea of freedom.’

Along the Edge of Thought I–III, photograph 1, Emilia Ochkova-Dimitrova

Along the Edge of Thought I–III, photograph 2, Emilia Ochkova-Dimitrova

Along the Edge of Thought I–III, photograph 3, Emilia Ochkova-Dimitrova

Ivanina Koleva

Puzzle

3 photographs · 50 × 70 cm · 2026

Mirrors, interiors and geometric fields turn the fragment into part of a shifting whole. The image is assembled according to the position of the gaze.

Lilia Todorova

We Walk and Search... For What? We Do Not Know

photographic series · 50 × 70 cm · 2026

Searching and focusing become an image of human movement towards the unknown. ‘We dream of spaces and stars.’—Damyan Damyanov, The Blind Chicken.

We Walk and Search... For What? We Do Not Know, photograph 1, Lilia Todorova

Maria Markova

Photographic Series

3 photographs · 50 × 70 cm · 2026

Light appears as a guide through arches and passages—a direction that makes the path visible. ‘Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.’—Psalm 119:105.

Photographic Series, photograph 1, Maria Markova

Photographic Series, photograph 2, Maria Markova

Photographic Series, photograph 3, Maria Markova

Radina Malaliyska

On the Other Side of the Water

3 photographs · 50 × 70 cm · 2026

Reflections in water double the city and unsettle the certainty of the image. Reality unfolds into more than one possible truth.

On the Other Side of the Water, photograph 1, Radina Malaliyska

On the Other Side of the Water, photograph 2, Radina Malaliyska

On the Other Side of the Water, photograph 3, Radina Malaliyska

Ralitsa Petkova

Resonance I–III

photography · 3 parts · 50 × 70 cm · 2026

The series approaches empathy as resonance between people: ‘When another person’s emotion / finds its continuation within us.’

Resonance I–III, photograph 1, Ralitsa Petkova

Resonance I–III, photograph 2, Ralitsa Petkova

Resonance I–III, photograph 3, Ralitsa Petkova

exhibition documentation

Space, encounter and opening

Emilia Ochkova-Dimitrova introduces the project

project credits

Authors: Aleksi Aleksiev, Viktoria Vasileva, Ivanina Koleva, Lilia Todorova, Maria Markova, Radina Malaliyska, Ralitsa Petkova and Emilia Ochkova-Dimitrova.

Photography Practicum, Engineering Design, Technical University of Sofia. Tutor, curator and participant: Emilia Ochkova-Dimitrova.