#together: A Photo Diary of Sofia & Plovdiv

Taking photos with our omnipresent cameras bears witness to the subjective and yet cultural ways of making this foreign world meaningful to us. 2019 the international study trip led us to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, located near Plovdiv, as the current European Capital of Culture. Leaving the comfort zone of Central Europe provided an abundance of valuable insights.  As part of what can be referred to a challenging tour de force, each student filtered the post-socialist environment through their unique perspective. Thus, each day a photo was carefully chosen and accompanied by a short reflection that testified to the meaning of its subject and the visited site respectively. The destination was reflected through 29 different pairs of eyes and the “tourist gaze” (Urri & Larsen, 2011) of the whole group was broken up into a kaleidoscope of personal experiences and professional focal points. The  compilation of these different views in this booklet provides a comprehensive picture of both the attentive attitude of the students and their visual/verbal reflection of the  locations,  organizations, enterprises and events that they visited during their stay in Sofia and Plovdiv.