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Jacko Vassilev's photographs are included in the permanent collections of the International Center for Photography in New York City, the European Center of Photography in Paris, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and many other museums throughout the world. Maureen Baumgartner explains the importance of his work.
Jacko Vassilev is a storyteller for the ages. With his camera for a pen and 35mm black-and-white film for his ink, he conveys in the faces of his subjects the timeless story of the human struggle to belong in a world of poverty, totalitarianism, and indifference. There are stories in the rope-like knotted brow of a worried farmer, his brother looking wistfully away behind him, or the unaccountable joy of an impoverished urban child, in clothes far too large for her, releasing a dove into the sky. A homeless man in San Francisco, oblivious to the camera, glares with the intensity of a prophet from beneath his wild crown of biblical locks, seeing a past, or a future, that only he can see. You might be seeing a still from an old black-andwhite movie, such is the scope of "character" that permeates all of this legendary photographer's work. His subjects are caught at their most human and vulnerable moments, with a breathtaking naturalness. There are no poses here; he has simply captured them at this moment in their story, and their faces tell the rest.
Look at any one of these photos and try to guess the decade or, better yet, the century. Then you quickly remind yourself that photography is only about 160 years old. 1700s? Not possible. 1800s? Maybe. Mid-twentieth to early twentyfirst century? Astonishing. San Francisco's wildhaired prophet could be the resident madman of any ancient Eastern European village or shtetl of centuries ago. The brother farmer bows his tortured face in his simple, rustic surroundings and could easily belong to the eighteenth century. Such is the timelessness of this artist's work. In each face can be seen the universal struggle for human dignity.
Jacko Vassilev was born in 1951 to freespirited parents in communist Bulgaria. As a boy, he dreamed of freedom, the simple right to plan out one's own life and destiny. Taught by his parents to "ask questions" and to...