Light Writing about Ilinden

As soon as the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising broke out, it attracted the attention of the world community. In order to reflect its development, a whole legion of representatives of the planetary periodical press poured into the Balkans (and above all in Bulgaria). Among them, the British turned out to be the most numerous and the best technically equipped – mostly with cameras.

 They sent the photos taken in Bulgaria to their own country – to the editorial offices of the most authoritative illustrated London magazines. Thanks to the magazines “Illustrated London News”, “Graphic”, “Sphere”, “Tatler” the visual element prevailed over the verbal one – through the photographs the subjects of King Edward VII became more acquainted with the problems of the Bulgarians in Macedonia, with their way of life, with their ethnic, everyday, cultural and religious characteristics, with their spiritual and political leaders, they more easily realized the motives that led these people to the glorious rebellion – an act of despair, but also of hope. 

With the help of their journalists, who by the will of Cleo became authors of an enthusiastic, fateful, tragic, but most of all – visible chronicle, the British “witnessed” the heroism of the rebels (whose Bulgarian nationality all correspondents from the Island strongly emphasized), of Turkish atrocities, of refugee misery...