Lonesome tobacco country
Valkosel is a small village of 2500, near the Bulgarian-Greece border. Back in the old days, from the 60s through the 80s, growing tobacco was a profitable business. At that time then communist Bulgaria was one of the world’s largest cigarette exporters and a key supplier to the entire Soviet bloc.
Saturday. It is a hot sunny day and the main road of Valkosel is empty. The sun is important there - in theory it takes two weeks for the tobacco leaves to dry, but everything depends on the sun. The two-week period was built on the assumption of the presence of the sun and when it does not shine, everything can go wrong.
A floor above the road four people are arranging tobacco leaves. Leaf after leaf they will spend hours repeating the same gesture.