Valery Poshtarov

Valery Poshtarov was born in Bulgaria in 1986 and grew up in a home where art and poetry were at the very center of life, shaped by his artist father and poet mother. This environment became the foundation of his artistic path. He studied at the National High School of Arts in Varna before continuing his education in Paris, where he studied Plastic Arts at the Sorbonne.

His work began to gain recognition early on, including a nomination for the Cartier-Bresson Award by the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Paris. Over the years, his photographs have been shown in 62 exhibitions across Europe, Asia, North America, and Australia. In 2011, he launched Eastern Europe’s first online art gallery, a step that gave him the financial independence to pursue long-term personal projects with full artistic freedom.

One of his earliest long-term projects is The Last Man Standing In The Rhodope Mountains, published as a photobook in 2022. Developed over 14 years across 985 villages in the Rhodope Mountains, it documents one of the last remaining traditional rural communities in contemporary Europe. The book is held in collections including MoMA New York, MEP Paris, and the Museum of Photography in Berlin.

His project Father and Son explores the bond between fathers and sons through portraits made across 14 countries. Set against diverse cultural contexts, the series reflects on how identity is shaped by family, religion, customs, and gender norms, while speaking to the universal human experience of connection, legacy, and vulnerability. The project has received several international awards.

In 2025, he founded the PhotoAnthology Foundation, a nonprofit initiative preserving the legacy of photographers and their work in context through an online encyclopedia of photography.