Bulgarian artist and photographer Valery Poshtarov (1986) is a father of two sons, whom he used to walk to school. These walks gave him the initial idea of photographing his 95-year-old grandfather holding hands with Poshtarov’s father. That one image turned into a five-year project, spanning fourteen countries (Albania, Armenia, Bulgaria, France, Georgia, Greece, Italy, Montenegro, North Macedonia, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Switzerland and Turkey), hundreds of photos, and now, in the spring of 2026, a hefty book: Father and Son. For some of the men he asked to hold hands for the photo, it was the first time they had done so in years, even decades.
For the ERB, Poshtarov made a selection from his archive, concentrating on father-son portraits taken in the borderlands of these countries. What emerges is a rich and moving trans-European story about masculinity, care, the transmission of cultural values — and that tipping point where it’s suddenly the child who looks after the parent.
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