For a third year the festival for contemporary art Fotofabrika in partnership with UniCredit Bulbank presents the greatest examples of reportage and art photography to the audience of Sofia. The forum is supported by Sofia Municipality, too.

"We support this project because it is related to the modernization of the place where we live", said the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Management Board of UniCredit Bulbank Levon Hampartzoumian at the official opening of the festival. According to him, it is exactly our mutual understanding of art that proves that we are living in one cultural area spreading from Great Britain to the Ural Mountains. "We would like our society and our country to modernize much faster than they are modernizing now. If we compare today with our own past, we can see a tremendous progress, but if we compare it with the rest of the world, there is still a long way to go and UniCredit Bulbank helps catching up with the world", Hampartzoumian pointed out.

The Mayor of Sofia Yordanka Fandakova said that Sofia Municipality supports the organization of the festival with two programs of its own, because the festival enriches the cultural life of the capital and contributes to turning culture into one of Sofia's trademarks. "All visitors of our city are delighted by what is happening in the spheres of culture and art", said Fandakova.

The topic of Fotofabrika this year is the conflict and it is present in all our exhibitions, installations and lectures, claimed the director of the Fotofabrika Foundation Emmy Barouh. The conflict is seen as a clash of ideas, emotions, generations, cultures, countries; the conflict as a combat between the male and the female principle, between man and nature, between the material and the spiritual world.

The Fotofabrika Festival was opened with an exhibition of the Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf with his four series Grief, Blacks, Dusk, Dawn. His works are exhibited at the National Art Gallery. Olaf is one of the most famous and distinguished photographers in contemporary visual art.

Doriyan Todorov's exhibition "Same Time Next Year" will be opened on September 27th at UniCredit Studio. It will present a selection of photographs from three festivals in Sofia from this year: A to Z Jazz, DAY001, and Fotofabrika 2016. Todorov is one of the favorite photographers of the electronic stage in the country and his photos are on the websites of DJs famous all over the world, such as Armin van Buuren, Mark Knight, Tarkan.

During Fotofabrika, from September 1st to October 22nd, a number of other exhibitions can also be seen at various locations in Sofia, amongst which are the Lovers' Bridge, The Czech and the French Cultural Centers and galleries. Photographs from Reuters, exhibitions of Pepa Hristova, Veselina Nikolaeva, Stoyan Nenov, Chistine Spengler will be presented there.

The festival offers to amateur photographers the opportunity to take part in the photographic competition Photomarathon. There are over 300 participants that have already enrolled who will have to take a series of photographs on predefined topics in a given period of time, explained Emmy Barouh. An international jury will evaluate the anonymous photographs taking into account the shooting technique and the creativity in interpreting the topic.

Vitoria Blajeva, Phone: + 359 2 9264 993, wjlj/ebwjepwbAvojdsfejuhspvq/ch

Mara Bareva, Phone: +359 2 9264 963, nbsb/cbsfwbAvojdsfejuhspvq/ch

Beatris Nikolova, Phone: +359 2 9232 528, cfbusjt/ojlpmpwbAvojdsfejuhspvq/ch