Since 2021 Professor Zeynep Zafer and I are working on this archive.

The photographs documenting the  forceful renaming, displacement and expulsion of Turks and Pomaks are either scattered in private and public archives in Bulgaria, Turkey and around the world, or are missing.

This is a significant problem for researching, understanding and transmitting the traumatic memory of what happened.

The aim of this visual archive is to fill this huge gap by creating the first of its kind open digital visual archive – museum of assimilation, bringing together photographs documenting the repression of Bulgarian citizens of Turkish origin.

The German Foundation for Research of the Totatlitarian GDR Dictatorship has supported 2024 the further develipment of the Visual Archive with research in the German Archives with a Memory Work Schollarship.

In June 2025 (3.06-20.07) the first photography exhibition based on the Visual Archive was opened in Sofia – BANISHMENT – Photography from Süleyman Akman and Behic Günalan. The exhibition was organised by the Fotofabrika Festival in the Exposition for National Reconciliation in Sofia.