Photography & Digital ArtJUL 2, 2014

Photographs Of Mystical Rock Niches Reveal New Objects For Science

"Nice rocks" is probably what visitors would say when they see this site in Southern Rhodopes. Ancient people however, believed that this is the birthplace of Orpheus - the divine musician and poet in Greek Mythology. The Rhodope Mountains in the Bulgarian South have always been regarded as a place of sanctity. The magical atmosphere can be felt at the ritual sites from the past: womb-shaped caves, ‘solar circles’, ritual couches and altars.
Krassimir Andonov, a renown photographer and cinematographer, revealed the secret mystic of this place by capturing them after sunset with the help of spotlights and directed lights to emphasize the shapes and size of the otherwise ‘invisible’ rock carvings.
He shows convincingly that light can serve as an important tool to assist archaeologists in their work. Some of the rock carvings captured by the artist are first-time discoveries unknown to scientists until now.