Yale Bulletin and Calendar

February 18, 2005|Volume 33, Number 19

Doctoral student Andrey Antov enjoys capturing his homeland's beauty in his works.

Student's photographs of his native
Bulgaria featured in exhibit

As a young boy growing up in the Balkan Mountain village of Svoge in Bulgaria, Andrey Antov would rush outdoors after school to enjoy the natural wonders of his country's diverse landscape: collecting rocks and minerals in the rugged mountain areas and near glacial lakes, searching for orchids in the dense woodlands, catching butterflies in meadows strewn with wildflowers, or fishing with his younger brother for trout in the blue waters of the Iskar River.

Antov -- who is now working toward his Ph.D. in immunobiology in the Biological & Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program (BBS) -- learned about painting and drawing from his grandfather and in formal art classes throughout his boyhood, and envisioned he would one day be a graphic artist.

In college, however, he discovered that photography allowed him a more straightforward way to meld the artistry that his grandfather inspired in him with his own appreciation for the natural world and the physical beauty of his homeland.

His work is currently featured in the exhibit "A Trip to Bulgaria," which lines a central corridor in the Sterling Hall of Medicine's Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library.

Just a few years after taking up photography, Antov began to earn a reputation for his work -- first at his college, where he offered the zoology department and other science departments posters featuring his photographs of animals and wildlife; and later at various popular nature and garden magazines, which began using his works. His images have to date graced the covers of 10 major nature magazines in Bulgaria.

In 1996, Antov won a special prize in the international photo contest "Earth for All" in Bulgaria, and three years later took first prize in that contest. He was twice a finalist in the Austrian Supercircuit Photocontest and in the Photographer's Forum Annual Photocontest in the United States. He has also participated in several photo exhibitions to benefit environmental protection.

The works on display in the Cushing Library are reproductions of some 36,000 photo slides the doctoral student has made over the years. He takes most of his pictures with a manual Nikon camera set at the slowest speed, which produces the highest resolution, using a release control and a tripod to cut down on vibration. All of his work is in color.

His exhibition at the Cushing Library reveals Antov's love for -- and historical knowledge of -- the country he first left in 1999 to work in the United States. Among his images are scenic shots of the shores of the Black Sea and the Danube River; the various snow-capped or mist-covered peaks of the Balkan Mountains; a river gorge; traditional Bulgarian houses; a Struma Valley vineyard; rock sculptures with legendary status in the town of Belogradchick; a forest in the Rila Mountains; a man reclining on a hill admiring his sheep; a farmer with his cattle; an ancient sentry tower; and the abandoned village houses of families who left in search of a better life in the city.

Antov says he particularly enjoys capturing scenes of nature at its most undisturbed.

"Bulgaria is a beautiful place with its sea, its rivers and streams and its big lakes," says Antov. "It has come to be considered the 'Switzerland' of the Balkan peninsula, and is now competing in the tourist trade with Italy, Greece and Spain because it is cheaper to go to Bulgarian sea resorts than it is to vacation on the shores of those other countries."

As he tells of his homeland's history, Antov speaks of a nation used to being occupied since its founding in 681 A.D., first by the Byzantines, then later under the rule of the Ottomon Empire for 500 years. It was eventually freed from Turkish control with the help of Russia in 1878 -- only to lose its political independence in 1944 when it was incorporated into the Communist Eastern bloc under the Soviet Union's guard.

Antov, who was born in 1976, was only 12 when perestroika -- former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev's program of economic, political and social reform -- began in his country. While he was too young to feel the impact of the changes, Antov says his parents, both engineers in a chocolate factory, found the transition difficult as Bulgaria developed into a market economy.

Like his parents, Antov showed an aptitude for math and science at a young age, and found it a challenge to make a choice between an art career and a scientific one.

"I decided it would be better in the long term to have art as a hobby," says the doctoral student, who simultaneously earned two master's degrees at the University of Sofia: one in molecular biology and one in ecology.

Antov first came to the United States to take advantage of the ability to work here after being issued a green card by lottery.

"All of my friends wanted to get green cards to come and work here because it was very difficult at that time to find work in Bulgaria," Antov says. "I wanted to come here the least of all of them, but I got the card."

Antov was employed for about six months in a variety of administrative support positions at the Field Natural History Museum in Chicago. He then returned home to complete his master's degrees, returning to the States again in 2000, this time to Boston. Although unable to realize his goal of finding a job in the biotechnology field, Antov did receive two job offers: one as a store manager of a camera shop and the other as a research assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

"It was a difficult decision for me," recalls Antov, "having to choose between two things I love."

He decided to take the job at MIT, where he worked for over two years, researching the role of regulatory T cells in autoimmunity.

Eventually, with the encouragement of MIT colleagues, the Bulgarian student applied to Yale's BBS Program. He is now in his second year at Yale.

"I like to figure out how the immune system works at the cellular level," explains Antov, whose research has focused on the function of T cells and their role in protecting against illness and disease. While at Yale, he has also taught an undergraduate immunology course, and this semester will teach science at New Haven middle schools as part of a new program that engages advanced-degree students in public education in the city.

Antov says that he, like all scientists with a passion for discovery, hopes to one day achieve a research breakthrough that will have a major impact on human health.

Like many photographers, Antov is constantly taking pictures of sights he chances upon -- most recently, during his travels throughout New England. His show at the medical school is his first U.S. exhibit.

"Here, I am mostly taking nature pictures, such as creating close-up images of ice or leaves -- shooting the details of what I see in the natural world," the doctoral student says, noting that some of his favorite places to photograph are in the northwest hills of Connecticut, the White Mountains and East Rock Park.

"I spend two, three or four hours in one place taking pictures," Antov adds. "It always brings me peace when I go out."

In the long term, Antov says that he intends to have a scientific career in the United States, but would like to someday retire to his native Bulgaria.

"I do miss it -- my family most of all," he admits, noting that he does make an occasional trip back home.

On one of his future trips to Bulgaria, the doctoral student says, he'd like to be able to show off what he feels would be a major artistic accomplishment: to have one of his photos appear on the cover of an American magazine.

"The first cover I got in Bulgaria was very exciting for me," Antov says. "It would be very special if I could reach that goal here, too."

-- By Susan Gonzalez

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