David Vasilev was born in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria in 1981, where he spent his early years. Ever since he was a little kid he was always surrounded by photojournalists, his dad being one of them. This had a great impact on his visual perception, thus photography becomes a necessary tool for self-expression. After he moved to the United States he began his extensive traveling in North America, where he visited some less known parts of the country, communities with the most archaic traces of human nature still intact.
“To observe is to spend more time looking through the lens than photographing. That is how I catch elusive moments of reality in a single time frame.
Growing up in a culturally mixed neighborhood in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria, defined me as a person, who later became the photographer. I want to capture that raw human spirit in people that distanced themselves from society. The joy and sadness they feel just by surviving, the simplicity we lack.
I often follow my instincts and never travel backwards. In one of my travels, I visited a place located in the prairies of the Dakotas where I met the Hutterites, a German-speaking colony. I felt their sincere hospitality instantly, even when they couldn’t understand why am I there, or what is photography. There was this humble existence in them that I wanted to save on film. With time, they got used to me being there and luckily my presence was ignored. Only then, I witnessed and photographed the real people, creating a visual memory of this time and place.
I will never forget the children. One day a girl with curious eyes approached me quietly and asked – Have you seen the ocean? ”
-David Vasilev