The Last Man Standing in the Rhodope Mountains, Valery Poshtarov

After 14 years of wandering the Rhodopes and exploring 985 villages in the mountains, the photobook The Last Man Standing In the Rhodope Mountains has become a reality. This enterprise began back in 2007 when I set out to capture and document one of the last remaining authentic communities in contemporary Europe, which are slowly fading away along with an entire culture. In order to realize this project, I traveled tens of thousands of kilometers around the Rhodope Mountains by car, motorbike, bicycle, on a mule, and on foot. Most nights I slept in a tent, in the company of bears and wolves.

This is a book about the Rhodopes, but also about life and death, about the ever-changing world and the way we perceive it.