Svetlana Bachevanova

Publisher

Svetlana Bachevanova is an award winning photographer. Born in communist Bulgaria, Svetlana witnessed and experienced the worst of living under oppression: the disappearance of people with dissenting political views, people sent to prison for asking political questions, parents who escaped the country leaving their children behind, oppression of ethnic Turks and Gypsies, the silencing of intellectuals, and the forced conversion of religious minorities.

In the beginning of 1989 she and her husband joined the coalition of democratic forces and became members of the first human rights organization in Bulgaria, whose goal was to defend the Turkish population which had been forced to convert to Christianity and change their names.

In 1990, Svetlana become chief photographer for the first anticommunist newspaper in Bulgaria, "Democracy". There she photographed the transition of the regime. Her photographs of Turks protesting in front of the Bulgarian Parliament for violation of their ethnic rights and of the beating of the Majority Leader of the Parliament during anticommunist demonstration were used as evidence against the newly elected Bulgarian Socialist Party in front of the European Commission on Human Rights in Strasburg.

In 2001, Svetlana made her home in New York where she still lives and works.

FotoEvidence continues her life work of using photography to fight oppression and expose human rights violations. She seeks to help photographers who work to document and fight against human rights violation so the story of her country and friends will never happened again.