What Once Was
Fragments of What Once Was
Love 19
Yellow Haze
Marsh
Objects//Identity
Selected Commissions
About
What Once Was pieces together fragments of my Bulgarian-American identity through themes of loss, displacement, and belonging. I explore the past through archival photographs and objects left behind in my late relatives’ abandoned home, and the present through domestic portraits of my remaining family. Infrequent visits to Bulgaria left me with fragmented memories and a sense of belonging always in flux. Like many first-generation Americans, my identity was forged by a combination of loss and luck—a yearning for a cultural bond just out of reach. These photographs reconstruct a narrative of family, culture, and lineage from my first-generation perspective
© Gabi Dinkova All Rights Reserved