After the Fathers

“After the Fathers” examines masculinity as learned system of behaviour. Through fragmented images, it reveals inherited gestures and the persistence of imposed roles within contemporary Bulgarian society.

“You are a man. Pull yourself together,” my father used to repeat.

After the Fathers is a photographic series that examines masculinity as a learned pattern of behaviour rather than a stable identity. Instead of presenting men as individual psychological subjects, the work observes them as carriers of gestures, reactions, and habits absorbed early in life and performed almost automatically.

Departing from the question of what it means to be a man, the project focuses on the tension between inherited expectations and emerging social attitudes within contemporary Bulgarian society, where such topics remain largely unspoken. Contrary to assumptions that political changes after the 1990s would transform social roles, many behavioural models have persisted, continuing to shape everyday conduct.

Masculinity is approached here as a practice transmitted through unwritten rules encountered within the family, school, and daily life: emotional restraint, fear of vulnerability, the need to maintain control, and the avoidance of failure. The figure of the father appears not as an explanation of male identity, but as a behavioural reference that is imitated and internalised through the body.

The images function as fragments detached from their original contexts and reorganised into a new visual structure. Rather than personal testimony, they operate as visual evidence of learned behaviour, revealing how gestures and postures embody social expectations.

By shifting attention away from individual biography, the project situates these embodied patterns within broader cultural and historical continuities. After the Fathers does not seek to resolve the contradictions it exposes, but makes them visible, leaving space for interpretation.