Bubkes Redux

Over the past months, several friends and former colleagues have suggested that I resurrect one or more of my old weblogs.  I’ve chosen to begin with Bubkes.Org, in part because of its emphasis on images and in part because, as its name implies, it allows me to concentrate on the minor and the peripheral rather than on real-time events or definitive pronouncements, things beyond the ken and resources of a part-timer blogger.

As a talisman of sorts, I’ve prefaced this first entry with a photo that appeared in one of the first entries of the original Bubkes.Org: Balkan clarinet legend Ivo Papasov, as I photographed him in a Sofia night club in 1996 (more photos, taken in 1992 at a wedding in Novi Pazar, Bulgaria, follow after the break below).  A chance meeting with Papasov and his orchestra a quarter of a century ago set me off on an odyssey that, indirectly, propelled me into a trajectory of events, some of which I intend to treat in subsequent posts.

Below, Papasov, then-sidemen Yuri Yunakov and (rear) Neshko Neshev, followed by bride, groom, and others, on the first day of a three-day-long wedding celebration, complete with attendant drama), Novi Pazar, Bulgaria, 1992.

(Photos copyright Stephen Lewis. Nikon F3, 24mm f2.8 and 105mm f2.5, Tri-X 800ASA, scans from color xeroxes of of 8″x10″ b/w prints)