Passers-by and their shadows

Passers-by serial was started about 10 years ago. Originally, a regular observation of passers-by and their shadows, from the 6th floor: at a definite time, shadow is perfect, not disproportionate. This shadow, integral part of self, reveals clues to personality while at the same time masking identity.
On the first paintings, shadow was the predominant element in Sofia Leconte Mitev's paintings.
Image of ephemeral, unreal and changing things, shadow is also a part of soul for some civilisations' traditions and beliefs. It has also a meaning in psychoanalysis:

- Buddhism: the magical action of a human shadow and the Indonesian shadow theatre open up certain prospects, the shadow appearing in these cases to be imbued with all the subtle essence of beings.

- The Indians of Northern Canada: on death, the shadow and the soul part company from the body. The shadow remains near the grave and maintains a relationship with the living. The soul is able to return and reunite with the shadow to create a new being.

- In a large number of South American Indian languages, the same word means shadow, soul or image.

- For the Yakoutes, the shadow is one of the three souls of a person; it is respected and children are not allowed to play with it; Toungoos avoid walking on the shadow of another person.

- Any shape determines the limits of a being; it is merely a projected shadow which comes from a superior light, which it both obscures and reveals.

- A Jungian analysis describes a shadow as something that the subject refuses to acknowledge or admit and which nevertheless imposes itself on the subject, directly or indirectly, for example the lower character traits or other incompatible tendencies.

At the beginning of this serial of paintings, shadow was black and opaque.
It was so materialized that it obliterated the person herself. Works have evolved, shadow is still present but the artist also points up the person herself and her environment. Viewer gets under a spy skin, spying passers-by without them knowing it.
He invents stories about them, through their gait and attitudes.

Sofia Leconte Mitev just started an experimentation of paintings over photographies.