SOFIA SO FEAR

James Crouchman: "When I first moved to Sofia, I knew hardly anyone, and spent most of my free days wandering the streets around ulitsa Pirotska, taking photos and drinking coffee in 'Halite'.

One of the first people I got to know was a fellow English photographer, a 50-something divorcee working for a financial institution in Sofia. In emails he referred to the city as 'So Fear' and the name stuck. It became some kind of title to our photography of our Sofia.

For a year I lived in a flat with paper-thin double glazing next to a busy junction on Dondukov, so the sound of So Fear for me has always been a trolley bus pulling away from traffic lights, perhaps why I take so many pictures of public transport. "

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James Crouchman

James Crouchman:

After graduating in the UK in 2006, I spent much of my 20s and early 30s working and travelling in the Balkans, based mostly in Bulgaria. I was particularly drawn to lesser-known places, especially the Northwest of Bulgaria and its still quite wild mountain ranges and the medieval churches and monasteries nestled amongst them. I shoot on film, usually with a Pentax Spotmatic that was given to me by a Bulgarian friend over ten years ago.

I returned to England in 2017 and work now in higher education. I still like to travel and take photos of medieval churches and paintings, but nowadays that is in my home county of Norfolk. This is a way of reconnecting with my own history and culture, but is also perhaps an attempt to recreate those trips to find places of worship in Bulgaria. As beautiful as Norfolk parish churches are, I have never quite managed to recapture the feeling of when a Bulgarian wood opens up and you are confronted with the sight of a centuries-old stone church with nobody around for miles.

SOFIA SO FEAR

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