THREE WOMEN

Tentatively dated from around 1890, the three women in this cabinet portrait have been identified as Efrosini Venardos Chlentzos (1843-1935) and her daughters Kyrani and Maria, from the small village of Christoforianika on the island of Kythera. In 1869 Efrosini married Charalambos Chlentzos, an illiterate farmer and fisherman. Aged 18, he was eight years younger than her, something fairly unusual at the time; the birth of her first daughter, Kirani, shortly after the wedding may suggest an explanation. Charalambos was lost at sea sometime during the late 1870s, leaving Efrosini to bring up four children, two sons and two daughters, in extremely straightened circumstances; three of her children eventually emigrated to the United States, and it is to the descendants of Maria Chlentzos that we owe the survival of this photograph.

The portrait was taken in a professional studio, most likely in Piraeus or Athens, on the occasion of what must have been a very rare, perhaps even once-in-a-lifetime trip for a poor Kytherian family. Efrosini is in the unrelieved black of widow’s mourning which she will wear to the end of her own life, but it is her daughters’ dress which is at first sight puzzling: though both are in traditional costume, they are wearing not Kytherian outfits, but particularly elaborate versions of traditional Attic dress which it is certain they could never have afforded to own (see the print by Moraitis for comparison). The answer is that by the time this photograph was taken, it had become fashionable for middle and upper-class women to wear ‘traditional’ costume when being photographed; as the practice slowly percolated down the social ladder, studios took to keeping a number of outfits on the premises for clients to change into. Since it was obviously impossible to keep examples of the many regional costumes on hand, the Athenian studios at least were limited to the Amalia ensemble, the elegant variant of traditional dress devised under the Bavarian monarchy for the royal ladies-in-waiting, and the richly decorated formal Attic dress.

Though frozen in the immobility requested by the unknown photographer, each of the three women has a different expression. Efrosini’s mouth is set, and her face and hands show the effects of a hard life and unremitting labour; she clutches and twists a handkerchief (which perhaps the photographer has given her) in order to keep her hands occupied. Standing, Kyrani, the eldest child and the only one not to leave Kythera – as the eldest daughter, it would be her duty to stay at home – has her mother’s mouth; while it is not yet set in Efrosini’s bitter lines, she has an expression of resignation, though she was eventually to marry and see at least one her five children follow her brothers and sister to the States. Wide-eyed Maria, the youngest, is the only one of the three looking not at the camera, but past it and into the future.

With thanks to Terry Chlentzos and Vikki Fraioli

Petros Moraitis: Unknown woman in Attic dress (c.1880s)

CHANGE 20.03.11

20 March 2011, 11.15 am

MERE COMPILATIONS OF FACTS...

 Patrick Cariou, from Yes, Rasta

 A federal judge in Manhattan has ordered Richard Prince to destroy a series of artworks apparently worth several tens of millions of dollars. The work in question consisted of reproductions of photographs by the French photographer Patrick Cariou, lifted from his book Yes, Rasta and roughly and very minimally overpainted by Prince; according to the court, Prince and his gallery, Gagosian, were in clear breach of Cariou’s copyright. “He and the gallery”, reported the Guardian, “were found to have acted in bad faith by not asking permission to use Cariou's photographs or withdrawing them from sale when the photographer sent them notice”.

While I’m not usually a supporter of ongoing American attempts to increase and widen the scope of copyright in all directions, it’s impossible not to sympathise with Cariou in this case. Prince is a tedious artist who place is more in the discourse of art business than that of art. His value is effectively limited to providing a useful paradigm of the concept of appropriation (itself a concept of severely limited interest); once the point is made, which shouldn’t take more than a handful of seconds, the intellectual and artistic content of Price’s work has been exhausted.

The crassness of the defendants was reflected in the language of their legal representatives, who asserted that Cariou's photographs were "mere compilations of facts … arranged with minimum creativity … [and were] therefore not protectable" by copyright law. The defence, one which has been used with some success in the past, was based on the premise that the appropriated work, lacking all artistic merit of its own, had if anything been improved by Prince’s scribbles. As it happens, Cariou’s Rastafarian portraits (see above) are impressively skilled and powerful images, and it strikes me that the photographer could well have sued Prince, not so much for copyright infringement as for artistic vandalism.

ATHENS CONSIDERED AS THE SETTING FOR A COMPUTER GAME

 

 Stelios Efstathopoulos: Athens Within, 2011

The hottest subject for computer games these days is zombies. Blank-eyed, shuffling, homicidal, the living dead who pursue and are pursued by the player down the endless avenues, streets and alleys of anonymous city centres. City centres like the Omonia-Syntagma-Thiseion triangle, decaying heart of Athens and the subject of Stelios Efstathopoulos’ latest photographic sequence. Currently showing at the Hellenic American Union, Athens Within focuses on the area’s shifting population, but the real protagonist seems to be the disintegrating environment through which the former move or drift.

There is nothing remotely nostalgic about this dystopic view of Athens, dominated as it is by brutalist concrete architecture seen from the worst possible angle, namely from street level and close-up. Through narrow concrete and brick labyrinths, past the signs of a consumerist economy on its last legs, through drifts of rubbish, moves a population seemingly lost, drugged or at best, indifferent. There are few signs of either community or redemption: just two street people sharing a cigarette, a child absorbed in play, the stray dogs with their irrepressible jauntiness. Every available surface seems to have been defaced either by graffitied tags or the much vaster surfaces of graffiti “art”, though it is hard to tell which of these two forms of vandalism is the more aggressive and contemptuous of the social contract.

Greece has no very strong tradition of street photography in either the French (Cartier-Bresson) or the American (William Klein) style; the best examples we have tend either to the grotesque and sardonic, as do the street portraits of Periklis Alkidis, or to the surrealist quasi-abstraction of Nikos Panayotopoulos’ Common Imaginary Places. Efstathopoulos’ contribution, all the more welcome and surprising for going against the grain of most contemporary Greek photographic production, is an impressive addition to the genre. It is also, seen from the perspective of the current social and economic crisis in which Greece appear to inexorably mired, a saddening requiem to what was once a vibrant (if never particularly elegant) capital city centre, now reduced to the status of stage setting for a zombie hunt…

Athens Without can be seen at the Hellenic American Union, Massalias 22, to 5 April

Η ΑΘΗΝΑ ΕΙΔΩΜΕΝΗ ΩΣ ΣΚΗΝΙΚΟ ΨΗΦΙΑΚΟΥ ΠΑΙΧΝΙΔΙΟΥ

Το δημοφιλέστερο θέμα ψηφιακών παιχνιδιών σήμερα είναι τα ζόμπι: αιμοβόροι ζωντανοί νεκροί που σκουντουφλάνε στους ατελείωτους δρόμους ανώνυμων αστικών κέντρων, συγχρόνως κυνηγοί και θήραμα. Αστικά κέντρα σαν το τρίγωνο Ομόνοια-Σύνταγμα-Θησείο, σαθρή καρδιά της Αθήνας και θέμα της τελευταίας εργασίας του Στέλιου Ευσταθόπουλου. Η έκθεση Αθήνα εντός που παρουσιάζεται αυτές τις μέρες στην Ελληνοαμερικανική Ένωση εστιάζει στον εναλλασσόμενο πληθυσμό του τριγώνου, πραγματικός όμως πρωταγωνιστής μοιάζει να είναι το ίδιο το θρυμματισμένο περιβάλλον μέσα στο οποίο οι άνθρωποι κινούνται ή απλώς πλανώνται.

Η δυστοπική αυτή θεώρηση της Αθήνας δεν έχει φυσικά τίποτε το νοσταλγικό. Δεσπόζουσα οπτική είναι η σκληρή Μοντερνιστική αρχιτεκτονική, ιδωμένη από τη χειρότερη δυνατόν γωνία, από το επίπεδο δηλαδή του δρόμου και από κοντινή απόσταση. Μέσα σε στενούς τσιμεντένιους λαβυρίνθους, δίπλα στα σημάδια μιας εν διαλύσει καταναλωτικής κοινωνίας, πάνω από σωριασμένα σκουπίδια κινείται ένας πληθυσμός χαμένος, ναρκωμένος ή στην καλύτερη περίπτωση, αδιάφορος. Ελάχιστα βλέπουμε δείγματα κοινωνικότητας ή ελπίδας: μονάχα δύο άστεγοι που μοιράζονται τσιγάρο, ένα παιδί απορροφημένο στο παιχνίδι, τα αδέσποτα σκυλιά με την ασυγκράτητη ξενοιασιά τους. Κάθε επίπεδη επιφάνεια έχει μαγαριστεί είτε από μονογραφικά tags είτε από τα πολύ εκτενέστερα ‘καλλιτεχνικά’ δήθεν γκραφίτι - αν και δύσκολα θα μπορούσε κανείς να πει ποια από τις δύο αυτές μορφές βανδαλισμού εκφράζει μεγαλύτερη περιφρόνηση προς το κοινωνικό συμβόλαιο.

Η Ελλάδα δεν διαθέτει ισχυρή παράδοση φωτογραφίας δρόμου, είτε της Γαλλικής σχολής  (Cartier-Bresson) είτε της Αμερικάνικης  (William Klein)· τα καλύτερα παραδείγματα του είδους που έχουμε να επιδείξουμε τείνουν από τη μία στο γκροτέσκο και το σαρδόνιο, όπως τα πορτραίτα δρόμου του Περικλή Αλκίδη, και από την άλλη προς τον αφαιρετικό υπερρεαλισμό των Κοινών Φανταστικών Τόπων του Νίκου Παναγιωτόπουλου. Η πρόταση του Ευσταθόπουλου είναι ιδιαιτέρως ευπρόσδεκτη αλλά και αναπάντεχη, καθώς εναντιώνεται στις κυρίαρχες σήμερα φωτογραφικές τάσεις στην Ελλάδα. Παράλληλα, στο πλαίσιο της οικονομικής και κοινωνικής κρίσης στην οποία η χώρα βυθίζεται καθημερινά, αποτελεί θλιβερή ελεγεία για ένα άλλοτε σφύζων (αν όχι ιδιαιτέρως αρμονικό) αστικό κέντρο, που κατάντησε σκηνικό για άθλια ψηφιακά παιχνίδια...

Η έκθεση Αθήνα εντός θα είναι στην Ελληνοαμερικανική Ένωση, Μασσαλίας 22, μέχρι τις 5 Απριλίου.

CHANGE 19.02.11

19 February 2011, 7.00 pm

GREEK (HIS)TORIES THROUGH THE LENS

The conference on Greek photography and Greek history organised for June 2011 by the Department of Byzantine & Modern Greek studies at King's College, London, which I first mentioned in a post last April, has now been extended to last four days. According to the organisers, the conference "aims at exploring photographic depictions of Greece and Greeks from the 1840s to the present in an empirical, theoretical and comparative context. The themes of the conference will examine photographs as a historical source of information, as windows into the country’s past, as symbolic capital in collective narratives and propaganda wars and as testimonies that record the interests and concerns of photographers as of their animate subjects and their surroundings. This will be the first conference worldwide to capitalise on photographic depictions of Greece as a means to problematise its recent history and its iconic representation in international media. Emphasis will be laid on processes of circulating photographs and contexts of consuming them, on photographs as artefacts and on narrative discourses developed around visual materials, on photography as memory and counter-memory, and on the complex relation between photography and archaeology as a nation-building institution."

With a broad spectrum of speakers from Greece and abroad covering a number of different disciplines, this promises to be probably the most intensive and searching consideration of Greek photography to date. A full programme, including abstracts of all the papers to be presented, is available from the Centre for Hellenic Studies site. The conference organisers are Philip Carabott, Eleni Papargyriou and Charlotte Roueché.

CHANGE 11.12.10

11 December 2010, 7.36 am

A GREEK ISLAND DOCTOR AT WORK, 1920s

Doctor attending a patient, Kythera, 1920s

This is one of the most interesting and unusual images in the Kythera Photographic Archive. It shows a severely ill woman in bed, attended by a man, almost certainly a doctor, who is taking her pulse; he is holding an open watch in his left hand. What must be an ice pack lies on the patient’s head, suggesting an attempt to reduce a high fever; her forehead is protected by a napkin, while the pack is held in place by a string rising diagonally over the bed. The table holds two bottles, one of them probably containing medicine, an octagonal pill (?) box, an enameled drinking mug and a jug covered by a beaded cloth. The doctor's calf-length boots with their heavily studded soles are an indication of the state of the roads in the twenties.

The print, which is in poor condition, has been cut down at some point in its history. The truncated text was inscribed in china ink directly on the glass negative plate. It reads “Panayot[is]… by the side of the p[atient ?]”, or maybe “Panayot[a]”, possibly the name of the patient. Whatever the circumstances, it was a very unusual choice of subject, and, given the slow speed of film at the time, was almost certainly set up for the camera. We know the woman did not survive, since another photograph from the same source shows her on her deathbed – formal photographs of the dead, unlike this one, were not uncommon in prewar Kythera.

Gelatin chloride print, 23x26 cm. Ref. no. KPA 00070.

WASHING CLOTHES IN THE KASTALIAN SPRING

 École Francaise d'Athénes: The Delphi Excavations, 1892-93

Human geography is innately conservative; once a location has been successfully occupied for a significant length of time, it is rarely abandoned, unless conditions change radically. Temples were often founded on the sites of primitive shrines until superseded in turn by Christian churches, while cyclopean walls, byzantine castles and crusader keeps might succeed one another upon the same commanding position. If such a site is eventually abandoned, the consecutive strata offer rich picking to archaeologists; conversely, continued occupation often poses serious practical problems, such as occur almost daily in Athens or Rome.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the site of ancient Delphi was almost entirely covered by the village of Kastri. The new Greek state, however, fully alive to the crucial role to be played in the development of national consciousness by identification with ancient Greece, showed particular interest in this historically and emotionally loaded site; the earliest tentative excavations, by the German architect Edmund Laurent, were carried out at the express order of the first head of state, John Capodistria.

Full-scale excavations were obviously out of the question until the village could be removed elsewhere; it took 68 years to complete the process of removal, beginning with a census in 1838. Among the problems to be dealt with were the excessive claims of the locals, at least according to government functionaries (“They will demand three, perhaps even four times the value of their property”, opined an inspector of finances), the already hydra-headed Greek bureaucracy, the earthquake of 1870 and a persistent plague of bandits. Confirming that nothing ever changes, a report dated 1841 informs us that some considerable time after all new construction had been forbidden, “repeated requests were submitted, demanding either that excavations be put in hand, or that construction permits be issued”.

It appeared for a moment that the earthquake might open the way to a final resolution of the problem. In a letter, the Secretary General of the Archaeological Society claimed that “the majority of inhabitants, consumed by fear of earthquakes and fearing a violent repetition, genuinely desire to remove from Delphi”. There were, of course, a few stubborn holdouts (“some few old men prefer to die in their ancestral huts”), but in general the secretary felt he could conclude “rejoicing that the Delphi earthquakes have been the occasion for this missive”.

Things were not that simple. Before the village could be moved the villagers had to be compensated, but no funds were available for the purpose. In 1879, the French Archaeological School of Athens expressed an interest in undertaking the excavation at French government expense, and a serious attempt at concluding a treaty between the two governments came close to fruition in 1881. There followed interminable negotiations between the French, the Greek government and the Kastriotes, which ended in 1891 when relevant legislation was finally passed.  As usual, however, putting it into practice proved another matter entirely. In September, according to Théophile Homolle, the School’s director, “no sooner had work began, than the whole village gathered round, and the more hot-blooded among the inhabitants attacked the workmen and took the tools from their hands, shouting that because compensation had not been paid, they would prevent work from proceeding…”.

It is to the work of the Ecole Francaise, and particularly Homolle’s interest in photography, that we owe the photographs which commemorate the unusual (and very provisional) co-existence of an extensive archaeological excavation and an occupied settlement. The Kastriotes were eventually removed to a new site, abandoning Delphi to archaeologists – and tourists. I admit to a certain satisfaction upon finding that even forty years later, the descendants of the Kastriotes were making their presence felt: in a document dated 1930, Alexander Kondoleon, Overseer of Antiquities, complains that “the women of Delphi persist in washing their clothes in the Kastalian spring”. Amen.

Adapted from John Stathatos, Archaeologies, Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, 2003. Quotations from Delphoi, Anazitontas to chameno iero [Delphi, Searching for the Lost Sanctuary], École Francaise d’Athènes & Directorate of Delphi Antiquities, Yiannikos-Kalthis, Athens 1992.

CHANGE 28.10.10

28 October 2010, 8.25 am

GHOST FIELDS

From Κώστας Μανωλίδης, "Μορφοποιήσεις του καλλιεργημένου εδάφους" (2010)

In a recent post on his blog, the architect Kostas Manolidis proposes the term “ghost fields” for the increasingly numerous abandoned cultivations of rural Greece. Over time, the distinguishing marks of these fields and paddocks sink back into the landscape, becoming less and less visible to observers at ground level. From the air, however, the traces of what were once sites of intensive agricultural activity at once snap into focus - a technique already used to good effect by classical and medieval archaeologists. Manolidis has posted a set of diagrammatic maps of abandoned field systems from several different regions, together with the aerial photographs the diagrams are based on.

CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE WITH RUINS

“Landscape with Ruins” is a succinct enough description of early Greek landscape photography. The ruins have multiplied a thousand fold since the 1860s, but in their latest guise they rarely attract the attention of seekers after the picturesque. Like ancient shrines and temples, the ferroconcrete skeletons of half-finished and abandoned structures are often to be found in particularly attractive locations (beaches, hilltops and woodland clearings are all favourites); they spread like festering sores, and like pustules, they are symptomatic of a deeper sickness in the body politic.

In the more innocent post-war years, unfinished or half-finished structures were usually encountered in towns and villages. They were indicative of a modest prosperity, sufficient to permit the building of a family home in stages: this year the foundations and load-bearing columns, next year the brickwork, the rendering and window frames whenever there was a good olive harvest. Often, when the ground floor was complete, rebars would be left protruding from the roof slab, witnesses to the ambition to someday add another floor to the structure.

In recent decades, however, the elaborate concrete skeletons in their mostly rural or semi-rural settings are almost always indicative of corruption, greed or hubris. It is these contemporary ruins that Jeff Vanderpool has photographed like so many new temples to Nemesis. The luxurious country villa dropped in the middle of a protected forest, the proposed seaside restaurant an illegal stone’s throw from the beach, the pharaonic development funded through who knows what ‘arrangements’ by EU money: all have been stalled, half-completed, by poor management, financial irresponsibility or – too rarely – court order.

Some will eventually be completed, once more money is raised and the right people have been bribed; others will remain in situ, crumbling far too gradually, a cynical legacy to future generations. For whilst a building may on occasion be legally condemned and a court order issued for its demolition, never in living memory has a single such order actually been carried out. Si monumentum requiris, circumspice.

Jeff Vanderpool, Dreams: Ruins of a Forgotten Future. Manifactura Gallery, Athens; to 2 December

 

Οι πρώτες φωτογραφίσεις του Ελληνικού τοπίου θα μπορούσαν σχηματικά να χαρακτηρισθούν “τοπία μετά ερειπίων”. Τα ερείπια έκτοτε έχουν πολλαπλασιασθεί, η τωρινή τους όμως όψη σπανίως πια προσελκύει τους λάτρεις του γραφικού. Όπως άλλοτε οι αρχαίοι ναοί, οι τσιμεντένιοι σκελετοί μισοτελειωμένων και εγκαταλελειμμένων κτισμάτων συναντιόνται κατά προτίμηση σε τοποθεσίες ιδιάζουσας ομορφιάς, όπως παραλίες, κορυφές λόφων ή δάση. Πληθαίνουν και απλώνονται σαν επιδερμικά καρκινώματα, συμπτώματα βαθύτερου νοσήματος στο σώμα της κοινωνίας.

Στα ποιό αθώα μεταπολεμικά χρόνια, τέτοιες κατασκευές συναντούσε κανείς κυρίως σε πόλεις και χωριά. Ήσαν ένδειξη μιας καινούργιας, σχετικής πάντα ευημερίας, αρκετής πάντως για το σταδιακό χτίσιμο της οικογενειακής οικίας: την πρώτη χρονιά θεμέλια και κολόνες, την άλλη τα τούβλα, ενώ ο σοβάς και οι κάσες ίσως περίμεναν την καλή χρονιά στις ελιές. Συχνά άφηναν αναμονές στη στέγη του ισογείου, ένδειξη ότι κάποτε θα έπεφτε και άλλος όροφος.

Τις τελευταίες όμως δεκαετίες, οι τσιμεντένιοι αυτοί σκελετοί, ως επί το πλείστον σε εξοχικές ή περιαστικές τοποθεσίες, είναι σχεδόν πάντα απόρροια διαφθοράς, πλεονεξίας ή ματαιοδοξίας. Τους καινούργιους αυτούς ναούς της Νέμεσης επέλεξε να φωτογραφίσει ο Jeff Vanderpool. Η πολυτελής βίλλα στη μέση του προστατευόμενου δάσους, η παραθαλάσσια ταβέρνα πάνω στον αιγιαλό, το φαραωνικό σύμπλεγμα που χρηματοδοτήθηκε, άγνωστο πως, από Ευρωπαϊκά κονδύλια: όλα έχουν παγώσει από έλλειψη χρημάτων, από κακοδιαχείριση η (πολύ σπανιότερα) ως αποτέλεσμα εισαγγελικής απόφασης.

Κάποια από αυτά τελικά θα αποπερατωθούν, όταν βρεθούν καινούργιοι πόροι και  δωροδοκηθούν τα κατάλληλα άτομα· άλλα πάλι θα παραμείνουν ως έχουν, φθαρμένα (δυστυχώς πολύ σιγά) από τον χρόνο, κυνική κληρονομιά στις ερχόμενες γενεές. Διότι εάν σε αραιά διαστήματα εκδίδεται καμιά διαταγή κατεδάφισης, το απολύτως βέβαιον είναι ότι ουδέποτε θα εκτελεσθεί. Si monumentum requiris, circumspice: Αν αναζητάς μνημείο, κοίταξε γύρω σου!

Jeff Vanderpool, Ερείπια ενός ξεχασμένου μέλλοντος.
Γκαλερί Manifactura, Αθήνα, μέχρι 2 Δεκεμβρίου

CHANGE 02.10.10

2 October 2010, 8.27 am

UNACCOMPANIED MINORS / ΑΣΥΝΟΔΕΥΤΑ ΑΝΗΛΙΚΑ

 

Giorgos Moutafis' photographs of young people who have attempted the often dangerous crossing of the Aegean from Turkey won the last year's Young Photographers Award at the Kythera Photographic Encounters. The complete sequence, "Unaccompanied Minors", will be shown at the Zeidoros Art Centre as part of this year's event.

“War, enforced conscription, physical and psychological violence, the death of their parents or simply disastrous economic conditions are only a few of the reasons why hundreds of children find themselves obliged to flee their countries. The journey to Europe is difficult, the crossing of the Aegean perilous. Some of the children make it. Others are lost. In the narrative, the term illegal immigrant always precedes the term child”.                                                                                        Giorgos Moutafis

Οι φωτογραφίες του Γιώργου Μουτάφη με θέμα τη συχνά επικίνδυνη διάσχιση του Αιγαίου από ανήλικους μετανάστες απέσπασε το Βραβείο Νέων Φωτογράφων κατά τη διάρκεια των περσινών Φωτογραφικών Συναντήσεων Κυθήρων. Ολόκληρη η σειρά παρουσιάζεται στο Πνευματικό Κέντρο Ζείδωρος στα πλαίσια των φετινών ΦΣΚ.

«Ο πόλεμος, η υποχρεωτική στράτευση, η σωματική και ψυχολογική βία, ο θάνατος των γονιών τους και οι οικονομικές συνθήκες είναι μόνο λίγοι από τους λόγους που εκατοντάδες παιδιά  εγκαταλείπουν τις χώρες τους. Το ταξίδι προς την Ευρώπη είναι αρκετά δύσκολο, το  πέρασμα από την θάλασσα του Αιγαίου επικίνδυνο, κάποια παιδία τα καταφέρνουν. Κάποια χάνονται. Ο όρος λαθρομετανάστης προηγείται πάντα της λέξης παιδί».                                                                                                                                   Γιώργος Μουτάφης

URBAN STRUCTURES / ΑΣΤΙΚΕΣ ΔΟΜΕΣ

 

Eleni Maligoura / Ελένη Μαλιγκούρα

 

John Stathatos / Γιάννης Σταθάτος

 

 Panayotopoulos & Petsini /  Παναγιωτόπουλος & Πετσίνη

This year’s Kythera Photographic Encounters will focus in part on contemporary urban landscape. Urban Structures, a group exhibition curated by Penelope Petsini, will include work by ten Greek photographers: Costis Antoniadis, Erieta Attali, Pericles Boutos, Kostas Kolokythas, Eleni Maligoura, Fotis Milionis, Eleni Mouzakiti, Nikos Panayotopoulos, Penelope Petsini and John Stathatos. The exhibition will take place in the old primary school of Mitata village on October 1st.

Related events include a showing of Gold Dust (“Chrysoskoni”), a new full-length feature film by Margarita Manda: “Gold dust was born of a need to speak about Athens, my home city. A city whose daily transformation eradicates its past, whose globalisation proceeds without respect for its inhabitants, without concern for either aesthetics or ethics”.

Fotis Milionis / Φώτης Μηλιώνης 

 Costis Antoniadis / Κωστής Αντωνιάδης

Οι φετινές Φωτογραφικές Συναντήσεις Κυθήρων εστιάζουν εν μέρει στο σύγχρονο αστικό τοπίο. Οι Αστικές Δομές, ομαδική έκθεση επιμελημένη από την Πηνελόπη Πετσίνη, θα συμπεριλάβουν έργα των Ελλήνων φωτογράφων Κωστή Αντωνιάδη, Εριέτα Αττάλη, Κώστα Κολοκυθά, Ελένη Μαλιγκούρα, Φώτη Μηλιώνη, Ελένη Μουζακίτη, Περικλή Μπούτο, Νίκο Παναγιωτόπουλο, Πηνελόπη Πετσίνη και Γιάννη Σταθάτο. Η έκθεση εγκαινιάζεται στο παλιό δημοτικό σχολείου των Μητάτων την 1 Οκτωβρίου.

Στην ίδια θεματική εντάσσεται η καινούργια ταινία της Μαργαρίτας Μαντά, Χρυσόσκονη, που θα παρουσιασθεί το ίδιο βράδυ στο “Λιοτρίβι του Φάβα” στα Μητάτα. Σύμφωνα με τον σκηνοθέτη, “Η Χρυσόσκονη γεννήθηκε από την ανάγκη να μιλήσω για την πόλη μου. Την Αθήνα. Μια πόλη που μεταλλάσσεται εξαφανίζοντας το βιωμένο της παρελθόν. Που παγκοσμιοποιείται  χωρίς σεβασμό στο ανθρώπινο στοιχείο της, χωρίς αισθητική και ήθος”.

THE 2010 KYTHERA PHOTOGRAPHIC ENCOUNTERS

The Kythera Photographic Encounters, now in their ninth year, take place at the end of every September. This event, which has become an important date in the Greek photographic calendar, brings together photographers, photographic historians, critics and curators for four days of exhibitions, lectures, discussions and socialising. The focus is largely on Greek photography, but efforts are being made to give the Encounters a more international flavour.The highlights of the Encounters are the annual two-day Conference on the History of Greek Photography, the only one of its kind in the country, and a regular group exhibition of new work by young Greek photographers. Two annual prizes are also awarded: the Municipality of Kythera Award for the best Greek photographic book of the past year, and the Encounters Award which goes to one of the portfolios submitted for the young photographer’s exhibition.

This year’s event takes place from the 29th of September to the 3rd of October. The Kythera Photographic Encounters are organised by the Kythera Cultural Association under the direction of John Stathatos. For further information, please consult www.photokythera.com, or contact the organisers at mail@photokythera.com.

CHANGE 29.08.10

29 August 2010, 7.45 am

PREMONITIONS OF ART NOUVEAU

The object pictured above is the so-called Jasper Cup, or Bowl, a highlight of the treasury of the Athonite Monastery of Vatopedi. What follow below are the opinions, expressed forty years apart, of two tolerably knowledgeable British aesthetes, Robert Byron and John Julius Norwich.

Byron first: “In the whole collection one object stands alone. This is the cup bestowed on the monastery by Manuel Cantacuzenos, son of the Emperor of that name, who was despot of Mistra from 1349 to 1380. Standing about 10 inches high, it consists of a broad bowl of transparent, gold-flecked jasper, yellow, dark green, and red, which is mounted on a thick octagonal stalk of silver-gilt. From a bulge in the centre of this, two rhythmic tapering dragons spring off at a tangent, until, taking an acute-angled turn, they come to rest upon the metal rim, wings folded, heads supported by little pair of clutching claws”.     (The Station, 1928)

And then Norwich: “For the truth is that the treasures of Athos, though nearly always interesting and often beautiful, are rarely in themselves sublime. One or two, admittedly, catch at the breath; … several others fascinate for their associations, like the monumentally hideous jasper receptacle presented to Vatopedi by Manuel Cantacuzene, son of John  VI, with its dire warning of what, five hundred years later, was to be described as art nouveau by a deluded posterity”.     (Mount Athos, 1966)

Personally, I can see where Norwich is coming from. The proportions of the bowl and its base are worryingly out of balance with each other, and there is something about the whole thing which tends to set one’s teeth on edge. Maybe after a while it set the Despot’s teeth on edge, too, so that he ended up banishing it to the skevofilakion of Vatopedi.

DIGITAL DIRECTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHERS IN GREECE

Earlier this summer the Hellenic Literary & Historical Archive, more familiarly known as ELIA from its Greek initials, released researcher Alkis Xanthakis’ Directory of Greek & Foreign Photographers in Greece, 1839-1960 in CD format. This extremely useful tool has entries for many if not most of the photographers known to have worked in Greece during the period specified, with the emphasis necessarily on native photographers; inevitably, the entries for some of the more obscure practitioners can be on the sparse side. Each entry includes (where known) basic information such as date of birth and death, nationality and place and period of principal activity; a brief biography; and one or more examples of the photographer’s work. The information is available in English and Spanish as well as Greek.

The photographers can be consulted alphabetically by surname, by date, by nationality and by location; the latter is particularly useful, given that many professionals in the 19th and early 20th centuries tended to confine their activities to a single town or geographical area, often extremely restricted. Unfortunately, the Windows-only CD has no true search function, so that one has to wade through what are in effect very short menu pages to find something (96 of them, in the case of surnames beginning with ‘P’). In general, this otherwise highly commendable effort is rather let down by a very inflexible and old-fashioned digital execution; for example, whilst actually occupying a relatively small screen area, it refuses to run in windowed mode, thereby making it impossible to switch between it and other applications – a major limitation in what is a research tool rather an entertainment CD.

The entire database will eventually be available online. In the meantime, ELIA has very courteously announced that copies of the CD can be obtained free of charge by personal application either from the Archive or from the National Bank of Greece’s Cultural Institute, both in Athens. Researchers abroad should write to the Photography Archive at ELIA, Agiou Andreou 5, Athens 10556.

INTERACTIVE MOUSSAKA

Η GALLERY VOULGAROKTONOU 32

σας προσκαλεί  την Παρασκευή 2 Ιουλίου 2010 στο χώρο της, το βραδάκι, για μια δράση του Νίκου Παναγιωτόπουλου και της Πηνελόπης Πετσίνη.

Οι καλλιτέχνες  θα προσπαθήσουν παρουσία κοινού να φτιάξουν μουσακά.

Διάρκεια δράσης από τις 18.00 έως τις 21.30, ίσως και λίγο ακόμη (θα εξαρτηθεί από το φούρνο). 

P.S. Για τους εκτός Αθηνών, θα υπάρχει live stream στο διαδύκτιο. 

Το έργο θα μοιραστεί μετά στους φτωχούς.