Starting today, the Balkan Collective (BULBphotos Insta account) is proudly presenting the Photo of the Month.

Each month the featured pictures are curated and the three administrators are commenting and judging some of them. One is selected but we don’t call it winner. You are all winners for two major reasons.

Firstly because you dare to share your work and we all know what an act of courage this is, to be subject to the public judgement!

Secondly because every choice is subjective and a different jury will always come up with different choices.

This month’s picture creates one of the most powerful feelings of the photographic medium: ambiguity. We cannot tell if the atmosphere is merry or oppressing, if the man behind the balloons is sad or joyful.

The faded colours and the geometry breaking the "kingdom of lines" contribute to the “unstable” scene. It is an unease picture with multiple readings.

In conclusion, the image stayed with us far longer than the others. One of us wondered: “It reminds me being dressed with my *good* clothes on Sundays. Is it a good or bad feeling?” There is no answer to that and the more the questions the better for a picture to perpetuate.

We have also liked the picture with the play of shadows. The contrast, the juxtapositions and the surrealism create a “clean” street photograph, well composed but where the form prevails over content and prevents us of going deeper after a quick reading.

The image with the old lady is the most static of all but the almost   white frame except the shy blue of the sky makes it quite graphic and attractive but without creating a message. We can “smell” the countryside and the austerity of the composition works both ways. It keep us to a distance but at the same time it fixes the memory.

Marius Petrescu, Panayotis Kalkavouras, Michail Moscholios

(Photos: Up: Polyvios Kosmatos, Left: Efthimios Koustas, Right: Stela Patrulescu)

Water has a dreamlike force beyond the objective experiences it offers to us.

Our experiences, our dreams and our imagination are the ones that explain the way in which the initiation of the water experience develops.

I tried with a brief (photographic) description to capture how water is involved in human life. (Photos and text by George Tsilis)