Movement breaks the image free from what the eye expects to see.
In E-motion, Ivailo Stanev lets photography drift towards drawing and painting.

  • women

  • nude

  • e-motion

  • corrida

  • documentary turn

  • the magazine collection

E-motion is an ongoing series by Ivailo Stanev, developed across different places, subjects and periods of his work. Its title is a term created by Stanev from emotion and motion, two elements that define the photographic approach behind the series.

Movement is used as part of the making of the image. It changes familiar subjects — a street, a beach, a passing figure, a corrida — and reduces their descriptive detail. Lines shift, forms lose their fixed edges and colour can become independent of the objects it originally belonged to. The resulting photographs often sit surprisingly close to drawing and painting.

The series has developed through several bodies of work rather than around a single subject. Seascapes and beaches appear alongside cities, people and photographs connected to Stanev’s other long-term projects. What links them is a visual language that has remained recognisable as the series has expanded.

E-motion represents a distinct part of Stanev’s practice. Movement becomes a photographic tool in its own right, changing the appearance of what stood before the camera and producing a visual language that has developed with the series over time.