Svetlana Bachevanova is an award winning photojournalist and the founder and publisher of FotoEvidence (fotoevidence.com), a platform for documentary photographers whose work focuses on social justice and human rights. With the annual, juried FotoEvidence Book Award, FotoEvidence publishes a book for a photographer with a project that demonstrates courage and commitment in the pursuit of social justice. She began her career as a medical photographer but was soon able to join her love and skill in photography with her political passion by becoming the chief photographer and photo editor for “Democracy”, the first anti-communist newspaper in Bulgaria. In this role, she reported, photographed and edited for the primary media outlet of the democratic movement that transformed the country between 1987 and 1991. Her book, “The Street”, documents the conflict that played out in demonstrations and encampments as the democratic opposition ousted the Communist regime nonviolently ( 2009, XIII Century Bulgaria). She went on to be the first female Director of Photography for the Bulgarian National News Agency. She covered the revolution in Romania, the war in Kosovo, photographing mass graves that provided some of the first evidence of Serbian war crimes against the Muslim population in the country. She camped inside the Parliament building in Vilnius, Lithuania during a week-long siege by Soviet forces. She covered the 1991 Soviet coup d’état attempt. Bachevanova’s work has appeared in National Geographic, the NY Times, Paris Match, W, Marie Claire and many other publications. She has exhibited in USA, The Moth of Photography in France, Italy, Greece, Germany, Brazil and Japan among others.
