Under the auspices of Ministry of Culture and Sports, the Cultural Center of Ioannina and region of Epirus
Duration: 12.9 – 19.9.2020 (new dates)
Theme: Stalk me
(The Entrance is free for all the exhibitions at Photometria Festival)
Photometria International Photography Festival 2020, with this year’s theme “STALK ME”, hosts 43 artists in 10 exhibition venues in Ioannina, with a various programme of activities for young children, photographers and high level lectures. After the end of the festival, selected exhibitions travel to a lot of cities around Greece and abroad.
Photometria Awards 2020 “Stalk me”
Exhibition of the 25 best pictures of the competition “Stalk Me” Photometria Awards 2020
Municipal Cultural multiplex (Palea Sfagia of Ioannina)
Duration: 12.9 – 19.9.2020
Mon. – Sun.: 14:00 – 22:00
Opening: 12.9.2020, 21:00
People that never sleep. Open screens and we spectators and spectacles at the same time. People staring up at us, a curiosity about the lives of others. We, first of all, photographing the unexpected and the random, before it gets lost in endless time. Because it’s our insatiable curiosity that pushed us there. A photo shoot on the street, a persistent look at the hidden or at something that we hadn’t even noticed until now, an obsessive glance. From Sophie Calle’s camera at the “Suite Venitienne” to the modern London’s street surveillance cameras. We live in a time where technology enables a continuous and two-way Panopticon. An endless surveillance of which we do not always know on which side we are. An instinctive need to see and be seen. Stalk us!
Dimitris Letsios, “A portrait of Volos”
Municipal Gallery of Ioannina,1st floor, (Korai 1)
Duration: 12.9 – 30.9.2020
Mon. – Thu.: 08:00 – 15:00, Fri: 08:00 – 21:00, Sun.: 10:00 – 13:00 & 18:00 – 21:00
In collaboration with Thessaloniki PhotoBiennale 2018 & Museum of Volos
Spyros Staveris, “The best of those times”
Municipal Gallery of Ioannina, Ground floor, (Korai 1)
Duration: 12.9 – 30.9.2020
Mon. – Thu.: 08:00 – 15:00, Fri: 08:00 – 21:00, Sun.: 10:00 – 13:00 & 18:00 – 21:00
Panagiotis Papadimitropoulos, “Meta-photographs” (postponed)
“Meta-photographs”
Where does a photograph end? What intervenes from the moment a series of pictures is taken until the moment it is printed? What happens in a photographer’s darkroom?
The Metaphotographs try to answer these kinds of questions. As their title suggests, they are photographs that derive from other photographs, in other words “extensions” of an original photograph which, as it is printed, slowly changes form. These are not just “pictures taken” but also “pictures constructed”, pictures that reflect the darkroom process of analogue photography, thus claiming freedom and plasticity for the medium of photography itself.
As Gerhard Richter writes, “a photograph is like a small painting, but it is not one. This property leads you to attempt to convert it into a tableau”. Undoubtedly, in these Meta-photographs, the main catalyst is the super-ego of painting, which pushes the photographer to overcome the limits of his medium, to describe as accurately as possible the “here-now” of the subject, the “me-here-now” of the artist’s body as he develops the films and then prints them, changing times and diaphragms on the enlarger, cutting test strips, washing the prints and then letting them dry on the darkroom tiles.
So the Metaphotographs, beyond their main subject – the urban landscape – explore simultaneously the truth of photography itself (what does it mean to photograph, to develop, to print?) which tends to disappear under the constant expansion of digital photography. At the same time they attempt to depict the photographer’s truth, his thoughts, his motions, his presence behind the camera and the enlarger, as he struggles with his medium.
Andriana Granado, “Apt22”
The Silversmithing Museum (Castle)
Duration: 12.9 – 19.9.2020
Wed. – Mon.: 10:00 – 18:00
“Irresolute suspensions”
Confronting the images of Apt 22, we have the feeling we are in the midst of an unfolding narrative. The characters are absorbed in shadowy behavior that for us, the viewers, are charged with tension. Explanation is not forthcoming: firstly, do we have only one or several narratives? Is it the same protagonist in each image? Is this a victim of a crime or the perpetrator?
Adriana Granado produced self-portraits during the two years she lived in different apartments and rented rooms in the city of São Paulo. The series boldly follows the tradition of staged photography, cultivated by the likes of Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall and Juno Calypso.
Similarly, Granado’s images tack heavily towards cinema, especially the suspense and thriller genres. However, while acknowledging cinema as reference, the peculiarity of Apto 22 must be reiterated and the pictures beg to be explored further. We cannot forget the fact that these are photographs and not film stills from a moving image. Such a condition translates into an inescapable difference in relation to the cinematic narrative – the murky character of the images does provide the possible closure of a solved mystery – there is no resolution. We remain immersed, suspended in a triad of inquiry: “What happened?” (Past), “What is happening?” (Present) and “What will happen next?” (Future). In addition to this static fluctuation in the suspense, there is the powerful plastic construction of the scenes. Intensity is heightened by the composition of strong colors, the lighting, the scenery and the staging. Their calculated weight carry the story, amplify the mystery and strengthen the images’ charge.
Text by Pedro Bonfim Leal/ Translation by John O´Donnell
Dimitris Mytas, “Hospital”
Municipality’s Cultural Center of Ioannina, (Agias Marinas 55)
Duration: 12.9 – 19.9.2020
Mon. – Sun.: 14:00 – 22:00
“Hospital”
I started working on the “Hospital” theme almost twenty years ago. But presently I am taking a moment to pause; as I collect these years’ material I contemplate upon it with critical thinking.
Looking back in time and through the portraits of the people photographed, the empty cold places and the lifeless objects, I recognize my dual existence and my personal journey in photography and medicine.
I realize that the long working hours, the night shifts, the “enclosed” in-hospital holidays constitute a parallel universe. Thereafter, the rest in the on-call rooms become a conscious time break of internal contemplation. All these years, the bag of my personal belongings managed to fit a camera and my photographic ghosts. In the light of modern times, the grand masters of photography together with creators of “allied” arts enhanced my efforts to produce personal photographic work within the time-space of my work environment.
The strictly entrenched boundaries of the asphyxiating hospital structures possibly resulted in taming my forms. The search of subject in my immediate surroundings led to my mapping of the hospital landscape, including in it the human presence, or, contrarily, indicating its “absence”. The working people who experience these spaces were always cordially invited to stand before the camera. They indissolubly gaze directly at the lens bearing their professional “garments” or, temporarily, stripped off them. My mental approach, that of the serial depiction of the hospital anthropogeography, led to my exclusively using the existing interior lighting of the hospital buildings. I feel that by doing so, the plasticity of the body structures is emphasized and the rigidity of the gaze of the depicted figures embodied in the atmosphere of their “natural” surroundings is imposed.
Vanja Bucan, “Sequences of Truth and Deception”
St George’s Gate – (Tunels of Castle)
Duration: 12.9 – 19.9.2020
Mon. – Sun.: 14:00 – 22:00
“Sequences of Truth and Deception”
In the series Sequences of Truth and Deception (2015–2019) the author explores, as per her outlook on the subject, our ambivalent relationship to nature ruled by domination, exploration, and, paradoxically, its idealisation. In the anonymous portraits and still lifes, Bučan strives to create a complex and a deconstructed vision of nature. The photographs in the series appear as playful sketches of our conditional and “exotic” love of nature. In contradiction to the incessant pollution inflicted by the contemporary way of life on our planet, many people still demonstrate various actions of minimal concern for the environment (i.e. planting trees, recycling, caring for endangered species, etc.), which only insignificantly affect our dire environmental reality. This series demonstrates this duality between our domination over nature and, on the other hand, our romanticisation of it. You could view Sequences of Truth and Deception as the author’s allegory of anthropocentrism, where it is difficult to discern whether the photographs depict love or domination. The series successfully introduces Bučan’s concept of “imaginary personal ecologies” through abstraction and various metaphors, where human presence is suggested only through isolated body parts, which in ambivalent settings enact various conceptual “situations”.
Parallel Voices
Ela Polkowska – Simone Jimena Rudolphi – Gian Marco Sanna – Svetlin Yosifov – Kostis Argyriadis – Pinelopi Thomaidi – Vasilis Nempegleriotis – Areta Peristeri – Nikos Priporas
Soufari Serai (Castle)
Duration: 12.9 – 19.9.2020
Mon. – Sun.: 14:00 – 22:00
Ela Polkowska, “Splinter”
“Splinter” is a story of people living in continuous disorder and about the feeling of uneasiness that their lives provoke.
For a year, I used to visit a family living in a house which should have fallen apart a long time ago. Yet, its residents apparently refused to accept that only order is legitimate in today’s world. They created around themselves a world resembling a warehouse – a space packed with things, whether working or not. Every time I went there, things would change their position, different people were visiting the house, sometimes it was hard to tell who is a member of the family and who is a stranger. It seemed that the continuous change gave meaning to that reality.
At the same time, I had the feeling that something is wrong, that this disorder should have end up with a catastrophe. And, somehow, this happened – the car which was owned by the family crushed, two animals died and the woman left the man and the house. Now they live apart, but with the same perpetual motion and disorder.
Simone Jimena Rudolphi, “The DisUnited Queendom – “We Won! : We Are Right!”
This series of images illustrates the state of mind of a nation. Showing the colourful tableau of campaigners from all corners of society in Black & White offers a means of unifying the commonalities … the viewer is encouraged to look and read the details of the images to discover the parallel perspectives vying for validation and recognition in an increasingly divided country.
Some of the text on placards gives vital clues but also hint at the difficulties when common frameworks for living together have different connotations for different people.
While each is a stand-alone image they are best viewed in pairs.
Gian Marco Sanna, “Agarthi”
When walking along the shores of Lake Bolsena one is made aware of its distinctive and particular ambience.The water with its many colors and sounds, all of which play a crucial part in the natural cycle of the lake, its flora and fauna. The lake, a fascinating and mysterious place, over which many myths and legends hover. There are several stories about people going missing on the lake, and never found. The most recent was in 2007, when a man and his young children simply disappeared, and were never found.
Widely held beliefs take us back to the legend of “The Gate of Agarthi” a mythical place located on Bisentina Island, one of only two islands on the lake. Bisentina is believed to be the point of contact between “terra firma” and its mythical parallel – the legendary inner – earth kingdom of Agarthi – described in the work of the author Willis George Emerson (1856 – 1918).
Emerson’s conceptualization was linked to the theory of “Terra Cava” (Hollow Earth), a very popular subject in the field of esotericism and literature, as expounded by Dante Alighieri, who allegedly descended amongst the chosen-few, in order to explore the underground kingdom, and receive its energy called VRYL.
I have worked on the mystery of Bolsena and on its legends, investigating among reality and fantasy. The work is based on the territory of Etruria that could be a point of passage, the “Door, of passage” towards something of indefinite and mysterious. The Etruscans considered the Bisentina island (situated in the middle of the lake) the spiritual heart of the entire Etruscan nation that guard their secrets.
Svetlin Yosifov, “Mursi People”
“Mursi People” is a series of photos that were taken during my visit to Ethiopia and are part of the album “Ethiopian tribes expedition 2018”.
The African tribe of Mursi people is isolated in Omo valley – South Ethiopia near the border with Sudan. They are one of the most fascinating tribes in Africa with their lives being a combination of brutal reality and amazing beauty. What was really appealing to me, as a photographer, was to capture and recreate the perplexing nature of their culture and way of life. Suffering from extreme drought in the past few years has made their life cruel and sometimes dangerous, but has not left a single mark on their traditions. Living among them gave the sense of extreme authenticity and in the same time felt like an illusion. Their faces filled my insatiable passion for capturing pure, untouched souls of a culture on the brink of extinction.
Kostis Argyriadis, “The Moscow Derivative”
The derivative measures the sensitivity to change of the output with respect to a change in the input. I photographed Moscow in 2015 and some years later, as I was looking the photos on my screen, I re-shot them. This change of view offered me the distance in space and time needed to distance myself from the theme and at the same time returning back to its space.
Penelope Thomaidi, “A Zone to Defend”
“ZAD” in french stands for an activist occupation intended to physically blockade a development project. Called officially in France, the Zone d’aménagement différé (zone for future development), it was renamed by protesters as the Zone à défendre (zone to defend). The ZAD of Notre Dame des Landes in west France was the first place to be so named. Since 2008, after a call by local farmers and inhabitants, a living utopia was formed around a fifty-year-old struggle against an “airport and its world”. By the beginnings of 2018, approximately 300 activists had organised their lives around this protest, horizontally and collectively, despite the markets and the state. On January 17th, 2018 the french government officially announced the cancellation of the airport project. But with this decision came another: the french PM also announced that the community had until spring to leave. I had a short time to get a glimpse of the community’s life before eviction operations started, comprising 2500 gendarmes, armoured cars, drones and helicopters. French newspapers calculated the cost of these operations around 5 million euros just in their first phase. Today negotiations with the state are still ongoing.
Vasilis Nempegleriotis, “Meadow of asphodelus”
The Municipal Home of Retirement is a charity institution located in Central Greece, Larissa. It began accepting old and abandoned people in 1967, following the merger of the assets of Dimitrios Hatzizogides, Athanasios Chalkiopoulos and Angeliki Lappa. The institution , considered as a lung full of life enhances the everyday of the local and old people.
When, I finally realized that my grandfather was the most important person for me, it was too late. Our grandchild-grandpa relationship made my life better and stable. He gave me the love that I needed as a kid and transmitted all the inner peace and patient he had. I needed a lot to talk to him, even if I could not. So, this drove me to this institution. Searching for a way out of the everyday routine I started visiting this heart-warming Home. I can call all these people as friends, even if I do not know them at all.
Using my camera as a ‘boat’ and the famous poem ‘Oblivion’, of the Greek poet Lorenzo Mavilis, as a ‘compass’ I walked through the corridors of Municipal Home of retirement and ‘breathed’ doses of love and warm. The poem ‘Oblivion’ includes the lyric ‘Meadow of Asphodelus’ which is considered to be the garden of resting souls.
In conclusion, I feel as the grandchild of all these old residents. This feeling gave me the taste of magic of these people and the colour of human relations.
Areta Peristeri, “Bad Girls”
Metamorphosis: “a complete change of character, appearance or condition”
In my photographs, I use my own self because it is my most valuable friend.
I have chosen a clear white background that does not distract the viewer’s gaze, ordinary objects and faces with extraordinary features that have become my allies in a journey of self-knowledge. Characters who trouble me, who are distinctive, who have always made me seek them out, analyze them and compare myself to them in order to erase an old trauma and achieve an internal catharsis. I impersonate other characters, because I cannot escape my own body. Why am I ailing, while others don’t?
My transformations are both a symptom and a cure, a total repression of every concern, a deterioration that helps identify the deepest reason of the current situation.
Photography as a therapy. I started photographing, when I became sick.
To me, it is the reality in which I am obliged to give reasons to nobody, my cure. “BAD GIRLS” is the emancipation of myself from the self-imposed prudery. It is Me.
Nikos Priporas, “Souvenirs”
These photographs, under the title ‘Souvenirs’, describe a highly conservative Greek reality, which claims that the adhesion to an unskilled reproduction of ancient symbols along with the adoption of false mimic images of the Western civilisation, add to the self-sufficiency and the prestige that it seems to seek. Throughout these reconstructions which mime ancient monuments and statues, one can witness the marching of representations of popular emblems, churches that appear as miniatures in the middle of nowhere (which believers do they invite, really?), as well as symbols that, due to the recent political developments regarding the name of North Macedonia., became objects of quarrel. In these images, surrounded by square frames and despite their strictness, one can witness the playful, even ironic, mood of the photographer. The invocation of the past, the oblique westward gaze and the emphasis on the religious element are the triptych, which runs a large part of the disoriented Greek society. The hyperbole in their use, certainly invokes beliefs and arbitrary, often contradictory, adopted identities. Everything fits but nothing matches. This series reaches the lines of political photography as it records and gleans that which longs to be, through the use of symbols, the public image of the modern Greek and how he coexists with the public space. It is the image that he, himself constructs by using old and light-reflecting stereotypes which he estimates that they emulate the splendour of a long gone civilisation as a deficiency for the creation of a new one.
Aleka Tsironi
ENTEFXIS, “Repost it”
Mendreses, Municipal Ethnographic Museum of Ioannina (Castle)
Duration: 12.9 – 19.9.2020
Mon. – Sun.: 09:00 – 15:00
Exterior group exhibition of 15 photographic clubs of “ENTEFXIS”:
Art8 – Agrinio
Team of Agios Dimitrios – Athens
Fotoereunites – Athens
FOA – Arta
Antithesis – Veroia
Fotorasi – Ioannina
C.P.C – Korinthos
Asto epikoinonoume – Patra
Ka.Dro – Filipiada
Le.F.Ki – Chania
Mariya Kozhanova, “Distant Thunder”
Outdoor Area of Its Kale
Duration: 12.9 – 19.9.2020
Mon. – Sun.: 08:00 – 22:00
“Distant Thunder”
Kaliningrad region is a small enclave with long and ambivalent history, separated by all sides from the Russian mainland. Before World War II, it was German territory, the heart of East Prussia. After the end of the war, it became part of the Soviet Union. When the last German citizens were forced to leave this land, many people from other soviet countries were sent “by distribution” for building up a new history of this place. Three generations were building their lives on this land which somehow still remains “foreign”. This forgotten piece of land had faced two great powers of the world that once held both supreme ideals and sovereign ambitions which now became a shameful part of the human timeline.
It becomes an allegory – those silent reminders of epochs that took place not so long time ago. Times of great ideals were giving people a guidance in their life, while working towards the highest principle of the Common Good, letting them aim for eternity. But greatness that has been owed back to people for their hard work and dedication was never returned. It was lost on the pages of history as the Greatness of Regime or Greatness of God. Now we got stuck in constant transitions, having no believes anymore, but times filled with doubts and unreliability.
It’s like a face with a mark from the terrible sublime of the past, a Generation Memory. This feeling of uncertainty is not only coming from the fact that once there have been national ideals that brought us for instance to holocaust and concentration camps, but also because remembering the suffers from persecutions, nobody could be sure that it would not happen again. It teaches kind people to live life of “small actions”, cultivating peace inside of them, believing that nothing great and dangerous could happen like this. Meanwhile, time-spirals spin and it comes the moment when it is time to get the courage to look into the future by dealing with the past.
