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Short biographical note: Lilyana Karadjova is a Bulgarian photographer, art historian and philosopher based in Sofia, Bulgaria and Rome, Italy. She lectures in the National Academy of Arts, Bulgaria, and in BA and MA programs in the New Bulgarian University on theory and history of photography, analysis of the photographic image, black-and-white photography, alternative photographic processes, photo art therapy. In 2016 she defended a PhD thesis on Psychological Concepts of Imagination in Art and Photography in the 20th and 21st Century in the National Academy of Arts, Bulgaria. Her research interests are in the field of psychological approaches in the theory of photography. She is a visiting professor in the Abat Oliba CEU University, Barcelona. In the field of criticism she has worked as an art columnist in the national Novinar daily (2008-2016) and has frequently contributed to the magazines L'Europeo, Art and Critique, the Kultura [Culture] newspaper, Bulletin of UBA. Personal statement: I am interested in photography as a medium with a specific dual potential. Photography links the real and the imaginary, the window and the tunnel, transparency and surface, the close and the distant as defined in the well-known concept of near distance by Walter Benjamin. In my work I explore this essential dual complexity of the medium. As a historian of photography I am tempted to question any recent common approach and any concept of photography as a stable medium. I explore the complexity of photography in historical cross-references, such as using digital projection in wet plate collodion process or bringing optical imperfections of the old mid XIX century lenses back into digital photography. Following my interests in psychological theories of photography I explore the concept of photographic transparency by working with self-modified lenses and question the concept of the frame by various techniques of exposure. When I experiment with camera design and optical phenomena or chemical processes and substances, I can feel the delicacy of the photographic and the freedom in its vast range. By modifications of photographic instruments I focus on the rich and artistic, but yet unstudied potential of the medium to transform reality into diverse light expressions and create visual meditations on the essence of light.