Gabi Dinkova

What Once Was pieces together fragments of Dinkova’s Bulgarian-American identity through themes of loss, displacement, and belonging. She explores the past through archival photographs and objects left behind in her late relatives’ abandoned home, and the present through domestic portraits of her remaining family. These photographs reconstruct a narrative of family, culture, and lineage from her first-generation perspective.Infrequent visits to Bulgaria left her with fragmented memories and a sense of belonging always in flux. Like many first-generation Americans, her identity was forged by a combination of loss and luck-a yearning for a cultural bond just out of reach.

Gabi Dinkova is a photographer and multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work often explores themes of identity, memory, and belonging.