Some ancient shots from Sofia...

ChrisR

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You may remember from the previous "old film shot" challenge that I spent some time in Sofia, Bulgaria in early 1970, with a small team converting some Fortran software to run on the ICL System 4 (an enthusiastic sales manager in English Electric Leo Marconi had sold them the S4 with the promise of our ICT 1900 software, just before the merger that created ICL). I had my little Werra 1 viewfinder camera, 50mm f/2.8 Tessar lens wind on by rotating the lens mount, lens hood reversed and screwed over the lens as a cover, nice little job. Anyway, I thought you might be interested in some of the photos I took, back then. EDIT: Most of these were on FP4.

1) Alexander Nevsky orthodox cathedral, in the centre of Sofia

Sofia pics 1.jpg

2) "Side elevation" view of the brick-built cathedral... despite the communist government, lots of people were using it regularly

Sofia pics 2.jpg

3) I really liked the "Soviet-style" sculptures and art round the city

Sofia pics 3.jpg

4) Another sculpture near the cathedral, I think. Bit less Soviet style

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5) There were many big bold posters; I bought a few and took them home, nearly giving my father a heart attack (better dead than red, he felt, after a lifetime in the army)

Sofia pics 5.jpg
 
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6) Apparently this is the only mosque left in Sofia, once a part of the Ottoman empire. I think this is the Banya Bashi mosque

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7) Tram with the mosque behind. We travelled in on these trams from our hotel most days; however they were packed tight with people and it was very claustrophobic, so if the weather was OK I would walk.

Sofia pics 7.jpg

8) a "Presspunkt", kiosks that were scattered about the city selling newspapers, cigarettes etc

Sofia pics 13.jpg

9) Street photography! I haven't identified the church at the back of this picture

Sofia pics 12.jpg

10) The place was very run down; this semi-ruined courtyard, fully occupies, was a few yards from our hotel, visible to the side (we had to move every few weeks as the hotels would be booked out for some deputation from the Ukraine or elsewhere)

Sofia pics 11.jpg

11) This was taken from the hotel looking over the area

Sofia pics 10.jpg
 
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EDIT: First few of these still FP4, several are ORWO NP20

12) I think this shot, in the hotel stairwell, might show the place where the last shot was taken. This was the team! The guy on the right, whose name I have forgotten (EDIT: Andrew, I think, on much later reflection), had a "proper" camera, a SLR, possibly a Praktica?

Sofia pics 15.jpg

13) Shot of Richard Were, since deceased I believe, who was the System 4 expert. I also got one of those sheepskin jackets, cheap but very warm; not much use in Australia, where I went the next year! Handrolled fags, jacket, the epitome of 70s cool! Edited to add: I forgot to mention, I had a birthday while we were there, and we all went out to a restaurant with some folk from the Embassy we had got to know. Next morning, Richard wasn't in his room and didn't turn up to work. I was panicking, phoning the embassy and hospitals. He eventually turned up, late in the afternoon, with his glasses broken. He'd gone on to a night club, met a Russian, got drunk with him and was arrested! They told him if he'd been Bulgarian he'd have been in real trouble.

Sofia pics 14.jpg

14) Sofia is right beside the Vitosha mountains, you could take a tram ride and a ski lift and ski down (but we didn't ski!). We did go up a few times.

Sofia pics 8.jpg

15) One, two, three, throw!

Sofia pics 9.jpg

16) One weekend we were taken right round the mountain to the Rila monastery, all zebra stripes and ethereal EDIT: These were on ORWO NP20, presumably bought in Sofia

Sofia pics 16.jpg

17) Another shot of Rila

Sofia pics 17.jpg

Probably more shots than one should really post, but I felt it worth trying to give a flavour of the place. The London to Mexico Rally shot I posted earlier came after all these, not long before the assignment finished, I think.
 
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Chris this is a really interesting set. From a photographic point of view they are a great record of a time gone by, the Werra had a good lens by the look of your images.

I am drawn in particular to the street scenes and the images of crumbling properties in the heart of the city! For me a real hallmark of pre Glasnost Eastern Europe. I spent some of my youth travelling in Communist East Germany and the former Czechoslovakia There is something quite familier in your images to my own travels in the early 1980's. The poster shot is also so much of that time. Somewhere in the attic I have some soviet era propaganda posters brought back from my own travels!

The monastery shots are in some ways quite different, perhaps because they are a bit more timeless. Those buildings probably look much the same today, assuming they haven't been demolished!

All in all a great photo essay of your time in the communist East, thanks for sharing.
 
Chris this is a really interesting set. From a photographic point of view they are a great record of a time gone by, the Werra had a good lens by the look of your images.

I am drawn in particular to the street scenes and the images of crumbling properties in the heart of the city! For me a real hallmark of pre Glasnost Eastern Europe. I spent some of my youth travelling in Communist East Germany and the former Czechoslovakia There is something quite familier in your images to my own travels in the early 1980's. The poster shot is also so much of that time. Somewhere in the attic I have some soviet era propaganda posters brought back from my own travels!

The monastery shots are in some ways quite different, perhaps because they are a bit more timeless. Those buildings probably look much the same today, assuming they haven't been demolished!

All in all a great photo essay of your time in the communist East, thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the comments, Adrian. Yes, the lens was great, and I really liked the camera, as long as I remembered to focus it (scale focusing). All my Acropolis photos were out of focus, I guess I got too excited to look at the camera properly! I didn't have an exposure meter, so exposure was basically what it said on the inside of the Kodak film box, presumably a version of Sunny 16. It's clear many are over-exposed.

I agree with you about the crumbling ruin pics. We drove down to Thessaloniki, and it was extraordinary to drive across the border and come to these white-painted, tidy cottages rather than the shambling ruins in Bulgaria. However, the Rila Monastery is still there; IIRC it's 20-30 km out of Sofia, so presumably protected from development pressures. The city is almost unrecognisable from Street View.

I wish I still had some of the posters I brought back! They were on my walls for years, but lost in a move somewhere.
Thanks for sharing these, Chris, they're fascinating scenes and great images. :)

Thanks Dean.
 
What a stunning set Chris and fascinating to see the city with so few cars and people. Also great to see the personal shots as well, because of the new old film challenge I've been going through a lot of my old films and I have pictures of people I worked with for 5 years and I can't remember their names now, must be getting old :(
 
Thanks Carl and Nick!
 
Great stuff, really enjoyed these and the story behind them.
 
Thanks Des, and Phil I think you're right. Street no longer cobbled surprise surprise! Thanks for the identification.
 
Brilliant set. Fascinating look back in time. Love the stairwell shot.
 
Brilliant set. Fascinating look back in time. Love the stairwell shot.

Thanks Trevor. I very much like that stairwell shot, too. I'd have liked to have got the young fella's features a bit more, but oh-so-cool Richard draped over the window frame makes it, I think. Until I looked these out again from the old folder, I didn't realise that anything was actually visible through the window! Default settings from the scan had rendered it featureless.

These are fascinating Chris, my favourites are the Rila shots at the end but they are all worth seeing.

Thanks Yv. There are a couple of other Rila shots as well, I think it's the contrast between the sharp black and white architecture, and the mist drifting through those trees that makes them for me.
 
Super set Chris, a really interesting look at a totally different time and place.

Andy
 
Lovely set - the orthodox cathedral is pretty grimey now as its in the middle of a busy roundabout. I went inside about 4 years ago and the detail is amazing. Am in Sofia at the end of this month again but I won't get time to have a look around unfortunately
 
Thanks Andy and Damian. I also went in to the cathedral; it was very strange to a westerner, all these people wandering about while a service was going on, mostly behind semi-closed barriers. Wonderful music echoing around; we heard that the choir was supplied by the Bulgarian Opera!
 
I think you're right Kevin. I had previously had a very interesting week-long trip to Moscow, as the technical assistance to a sales team wanting to sell the System 4. Quite an education for a 23-year-old. I didn't dare take my camera there!

BTW one of the ICL sales team in Sofia bought an E-type in the UK and drove it out there. It's the only E-type I've ever sat in. He said the ride was terrible on the bad roads, but the Bulgarian girls were all for it, the big bulge on the bonnet apparently put all sorts of ideas into their heads!
 
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