Ivan Pastoukhov was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1951. Coming from a family of intellectuals and scientists, he graduated in medical engineering and worked for ten years at the Sofia Medical Academy.

A freethinker, with an independent mind and a passion for discovery, Ivan Pastoukhov found his way to the other side of the iron curtain. In 1984 he settled in Paris.

Art, philosophy, psychology, different sports all close to nature, 20 years of wine business, Ivan travels, meets people and develops a broad and manifold vision of the world.

Nature and human souls are travelling in his heart. Life will take him from New York to Yemen and from New Zealand to Peru before he returns to his ancestral near East:  this time with a free eye and creative mind to shoot freely and with “Vinexcellence” in Sofia to introduce the culture and the best French wines can give…

Ivan keeps his free nomad’s mind in our world of perpetual mutation. Living is to be born at every moment, what real travelling is meant to provoke, what photography is trying to grasp.

ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY:

I am seeking for beauty, the world’s  real garment for ever elusive and so desperately sought for.

My pictures are timelessness.

Photography: to see signs, to read them and to share them.
To capture life at any time.

This is why these voyages, these pictures help me to brush away the daily life softening its rules.

The real challenge lies in the difficulty to become invisible, in order to take better shots, to share joy without loosing it, to clear a way for the human in me. To scrutinize as if you never look around, to grasp without grasping, to steel instants that suits me, paving my ways between reality and fiction.

My photographs are self-portraits.