Sport Shortlist

Over the summer, Bulgaria based Mihaela Ivanova’s kids discovered a love for skateboarding and riding scooters. With them, she began visiting Sofia’s only skatepark and found joy in watching young people immerse themselves in their passion with energy and dedication, rather than spending their time glued to a smartphone. The photographer started capturing these portraits with a vintage twin-lens Rolleiflex camera, sparking curiosity among kids who had never seen a camera like it before. Bulgaria offers very few spaces for sports, social interaction and play, so through this series, Ivanova wants to highlight the pressing need for more recreational spaces, and show that ‘rolling is infinitely cooler than staring at a screen.’

Lives in Sofia, Bulgaria. Graduated the New Bulgarian University, Bachelors program Visual Arts – Photography module in 2011. Fascinated of working with analogue medium format cameras and the challenge of the traditional black and white developing.