a virtual walk in the Tobacco City”
Project manager – Boris Zafirov
Research and interviews – Elitsa Stoilova and Boris Zafirov
Graphic designer and 3D photography – Atanas Dinchev
Author of the story behind the scenes – Katerina Georgieva
Voices – Anna Dimitrova and Nikolay Shopov
“Tobacco Stories – a virtual walk in the Tobacco City” is a project illustrating the state of the neighborhood around the tobacco warehouses and Ivan Vazov Street. Through a virtual walk, in a website created by ten 3D photographs, we focus on the problem related to the preservation of cultural heritage and civic activity.
In the first stage of the project, in partnership with the Department of Ethnology at Plovdiv University “Paisiy Hilendarski” and Dr. Elitsa Stoilova, we generated archives in the form of photographs, articles and interviews. From the found materials we formed aesthetic references and stories to transport the visitor of the site to the past of the neighborhood. The cultural heritage of a city is one of the main sources of memory and awareness of its society. By forgetting or neglecting it, we are doomed to social disembodiment and the disintegration of our identification code. The fate of the symbolic buildings is not so important in relation to their actual transformation, but in relation to the participation of the citizens and their right to conscious choice.