• English
  • Greek
Exhibitions

With the financial support and the auspices of Ministry of Culture and Sports, Municipality of Ioannina and the Cultural Center of Ioannina

 

 

14th edition of

Photometria International Photography Festival

Duration: 24.9 – 2.10.2022

 

Photometria International Photography Festival 2022 hosts mοre than 50 artists in 13 exhibition venues in Ioannina, including the new space: Photometria Photography Center (PPC)! The program, as every year, is full of activities for children, photographers and high level lectures. After the end of the festival, selected exhibitions travel to a lot of cities around Greece and abroad.

 

 

The entrance is free for all the exhibitions at Photometria Festival

“Looking for the Light”, Photometria Awards 2022

 

Group exhibition of the 25 selected photographs of the competition Photometria Awards 2022 “Looking for the Light”, judged by Martin Parr!

 

 

I am forever chasing light. Light turns the ordinary into the magical.

Trent Parke

 

Light, the cornerstone of photography. It is the animator, the one which reveals the world around us, which illuminates the unknown, and reveals virtues, hope, truth and happiness. It was used as a symbol of “good” religiously and socio-politically, which is in a perpetual battle against evil, darkness and shadows. It is identified with the divine, but also with knowledge. Already last year’s theme (Un)lucky (R)evolution, raised the question of where we stand as humanity now. This year we look forward. We look to the future optimistically, seeking light in every aspect of our lives. We are looking for all that is worth fighting for, but also all the darkness that is waiting to be illuminated. We are looking for the light that will give us new knowledge but also the optimism we need in a world that continues to plunge into darkness. As Magnum’s Australian photographer Trent Parke puts it: “Light turns the ordinary into the magical.” So this year, let’s try to spread the magic!

 

Participating:

 

Daria Tsygankova – “The dark knight”, Akis Pasalidis – “Untitled”, Noemi Comi – “Deathfest”, Vasilis D. Gonis – “Don’t look at the sun”, Vladimiros Tachmatzidis – “Trip to knowhere”, Aggelos Barai – “Untitled”, Mohammad Reza Masoumi – “Ahoora”, Andi Abdul Halil – “The Best Friend”, Nikos Konidaris – “Angeliki”, Arezoo Babagoli – “In the heart of the earth”, Tatiana Mishchenko – “Ephemeral Motels”, Sophia Tolika – “The escape of Philoctetes”, Olga Tkachenko – “Spring morning”, Gali Tibbon – “Cross of Light”, Elina Kichheva – “Shaman”, Elena Kozlova – “Natalie”, Antonis Papakonstantinou – “Light composition”, Natalia Gorshkova – “Jugglers”, Maria Karofillidou – “On the beach”, Matteo Capone – “Solo”, Azamat Matkarimov – “Mysterious shepherd”, Ali Moarref – “Pray for forgiveness”, Sasan Moayyedi – “Love Story”, Sibusiso Bheka – “Iparty”, Isidoros Blougkaris – “Breathe”

 

 

Ioannina City Hall (outdoor area)

Duration: 24.9 – 28.10.2022

© Iliana Meintani

“landscape stories”

 

Landscape art first emerged as a parergon at the background of early Renaissance paintings and was only established as an independent genre in the mid-16th century. In Greece, it appeared in the last quarter of the 19th century, and was established, at least in naturalistic precision, in the 20th century thanks to the medium of photography. This development was preceded in the 19th century by the popular photographic landscape with ruins, which validated the contemporary Greek ideological trait of archaeolatry. The work of Swiss photographer Fred Boissonnas and Nelly’s, dating to the early 20th century and the interwar period respectively, played a key role in turning landscape, even devoid of ruins, into a pillar of the official national narrative. In the post-war period, the island landscape was used as a vehicle to promote mass tourism. Meanwhile, artists like Kostas Balafas, Takis Tloupas, Dimitris Letsios and Spyros Meletzis focused on the unofficial, often mountainous, landscape of the country, capturing demotic culture. After the fall of the military junta the artistic expression of domestic landscape photography gradually began challenging the one-sided idealization and getting infiltrated with contemporary questions and issues. landscape stories attempts as an exhibition to look into the Greek landscape photograph of the 21st century through a selection of works by artists younger or less established in the local landscape canon. The exhibition examines the natural, cultural or suburban landscape, avoiding its urban version as a separate, significant chapter in its own right. Their work endeavours to study the evolution of the form and content of the country’s landscape in contemporary terms, while also pondering on its nature and its photographic representation.

In this context, contemporary Greek landscape photography appears multi-faceted aesthetically, conceptually and technically. There is an evident focus on the vernacular landscape, while stylistically the “documentary style” is prevalent, recording reality with precision while also describing poetically and feeling semantically. Several artists take a critical stance of the senseless exploitation and balance disruption of the natural space, presuming that selective topiolatry conceals the methodical topiomachy. A number of artists correspondingly express the innermost desire of absconding from the exhausting saturation and melancholic alienation of the modern world.

But why is it, that in Greek photography landscape retains a vitality, at a time increasingly urban, technological, consumerist and immaterial? Perhaps because its commercialized image remains an ever-alluring showcase and important capital for the country’s economy, a showcase making many photographers nowadays want to look behind. Also, because landscape has historically underpinned modern Greek ideological narratives, such as the landscape with ruins, the bucolic narrative, the economic growth ideology. A third explanation is that urbanization grew more massively in the country only in the post-civil war period. Thus, the separation from the original womb took place significantly later in Greece compared to other Western societies, and the memory of a communal life closer to nature, though no longer intact, has not been completely erased.

W.J.T. Mitchell suggested that landscape should be treated as a verb rather than a noun, thereby becoming an active agent of “social, subjective identity” formation, instead of a static image. But is it possible for one to be critical of the unresolved issues raised by the (domestic) landscape, without necessarily ignoring its beauty? Perhaps it is, if one adopts John Brinckerhoff-Jackson’s view, that a landscape is beautiful as long as it contributes to experiences important for self-knowledge. With that in mind, this exhibition attempts to conceive of landscape as an open, palimpsest text, in which smaller narratives are recorded, and where personal history is intertwined with collective history, the poetic with the existential, imagination with geography, political strategy with individual fate, and artistic expression with raw data.

Hercules Papaioannou

 

Participating:

 

Yorgos Yatromanolakis, Konstantinos Gdontakis, Katerina Digoni, Kostas Kapsianis, Demetris Koilalous, Babis Kougemitros, Yiannis Koukourakis, Petros Koublis, Ioannis Konstantinou, Iliana Meintani, Pericles Boutos, Rea Papadopoulou, Kosmas Pavlidis, Achilleas Tilegrafos, Konstantinos Tountas, Marinos Tsagkarakis, Panos Charalambidis, Mary Chairetaki, Jeff Vanderpool

 

 

Municipal Gallery of Ioannina (Korai 1)

Duration: 25.9 – 23.11

Mon. – Thu.: 08:00 – 15:00

Fri.: 08:00 – 21:00

Sun.: 10:00 – 13:00 & 18:00 – 21:00

 

In collaboration with Momus – Thessaloniki Museum of Photography

“Meditations”, Alice Zilberberg

 

In this series, Zilberberg creates animal montages as an expression of self-therapy, drawing attention to mindfulness and nature conservation. As an urbanite, functioning day-to-day in a fast-paced, built environment can be emotionally unsettling. The artist regrounds herself in the sense of calm issued by these animals. These creatures reinstate a presence, a tranquility, and a grander perspective. Their minimal aesthetic is metaphorical of striving for simplicity. Zilberberg’s works invite a meditative state, encouraging the viewer to stay still and find happiness in the moment. The works are an amalgam of many photographs from around the world, put together by the artist in post-production. The digital displacement of the animals from their surroundings is representative of their displacement in real life from the wild due to human interference. The animals have a “home” within each image, which, in many cases, no longer exists in the wild. The images are a tribute, a testament to the beauty of nature, and a ground on which to reflect on the interaction between humans and the natural world.

 

 

Outdoor area of Its Kale (opposite Byzantine Museum)

Duration: 24.9 – 9.10.2022

Mon. – Sun.: 08:00 – 22:00

“Diava, nomadic pastoralism in mountainous Northern Greece”, Dimitris Tosidis

 

Pastoral Farming, is a centuries old practice kept alive in the crisis stricken Greece. High in the mountains of Northern Greece a farming practice that belongs in previous centuries still takes place. This practice –or technique called Diava (in Greek means moving by feet)– which can be tracked down in centuries is the yearly rural migration of shepherds and their flocks between summer and winter pastures and from isolated highlands to warmer lowlands. Throughout time and spaces such movements have been at the core of cultural and social composition of mountainous farming communities while they have contributed to shaping and developing the landscape of the areas they took place. Practiced mostly by the Greece’s indigenous groups such as the Vlachs and Sarakatsans, pastoral farming used to be the country’s main practice until the 1960s and 1970s when new farming technologies started emerging. Recently, it became part of the UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage. Nowadays, very few families keep moving by feet without using any mean of transportation to keep their flock in high altitudes during summer and after move more than 200 km to go back to their winter destination which is in Thessaly region, Central Greece. This is not only a traditional and cultural action but also an ecological and environmental friendly practice which maintains the human presence in one of the most remote mountainous areas in Balkans and EU.

 

 

The Silversmithing Museum (Castle)

Duration: 21.9 – 24.10.2022

Wed. – Mon.: 10:00 – 18:00

 

In collaboration with Athens Photo World

07:00 am to 15:00 pm”, Michalis Patsouras

 

It’s the working hours of the Greek Public Services. Until recently the dream of almost everyone in Greece included a position, anywhere, in the greek public sector, as the best prospect for a steady salary and a sense of security and permanence. It happened to me as well, without ever seeking it, and for ten years I learned what  Greek Public Services are about. Grey spaces, half hearted rhythms, seas of paper from which the leviathan of bureaucracy would emerge daily to drown any sign of human creativity. People feeling exhausted, not by tiredness but by the relentless daily routine, which could be a little less unbearable if this whole mechanism somehow worked after a reasonable fashion. People working together, dreaming, celebrating, feeling bored, looking for the meaning inside all this and often for the emergency exit.

My intention was never to expose my ex colleagues, but rather to capture their lives and daily routines. So, observe and record is what I do and as luck would have it my work is being treated as a socio historic document, now that the public sector in Greece is treated as the scapegoat of the crisis. European and local bureaucrats have deemed that sanitization of the public services will open the road for economic growth and reform of the country. No matter the case, Greek people’s dream for a place in the public sector are crumbling and the foundations of this dysfunctional mechanism are shaking. For what the future may bring, we await…

 

 

Municipal Cultural Multiplex “D. Chatzis” (Old Slaughterhouses)

Duration: 24.9 – 2.10.2022

Mon. – Fri.: 18:00 – 22:00

Sat. – Sun.: 10:00 – 14:00 & 18:00 – 22:00

“The Landscapes Behind”, Angela Svoronou

 

Landscapes, concealed behind other landscapes. Landscapes contained by a frame on the wall or by the sides of a piece of furniture. These landscapes, formed by time and decay, remain unseen until one day a house move, a death, a change in the unbroken routine of everyday life reveals them. As the French philosopher and semiotician Roland Barthes reminds us, photography is closely related to death.

Landscapes or, more precisely, marks of a past that ended in shame or in glory. Unexpectedly and often unwillingly we find ourselves mourning, laying a beloved ones’ body to rest, moving away, changing life.

Ephemeral yet permanent, they are the ultimate traces of a human life, bound to forever vanish under the house painter’s ruthless brush. The trace and the object that created it are bound together, the existence of the former entailing the presence of the latter just as the photographic print cannot exist without the negative. Yet they annul each other since they must always remain hidden, one under the other.

As the writer and art historian Maria Yiayiannou puts it, “the photographic works of Angela Svoronou constitute an organised stunt in an attempt to overthrow the Real. How can this be expected from a series of documentary photographs that depict precisely the ramparts of reality? (…) These photographic works are so important because they reveal a very pointed absence: the absence of a subject. The subject departs from the building together with the house tenant, the office worker, the former owner of the business, the once newlywed couple. The formerly main subject of the picture, the person who left, becomes a Landscape Behind, part of the secret life of the wall. In these pictures the wall is a protagonist that holds on to his secrets. The wall’s lips are sealed.”

 

 

St George’s Gate (Tunels of Castle)

Duration: 24.9 – 2.10.2022

Mon. – Fri.: 18:00 – 22:00

Sat. – Sun.: 10:00 – 14:00 & 18:00 – 22:00

© National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Photographic Archive –

Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports/ Hellenic Organization of Cultural Resources Development (H.O.C.RE.D.)

“The burial and protection of the antiquities

of the National Archaeological Museum during World War II”

 

The Exhibition “The burial and protection of the antiquities of the National Archaeological Museum during World War II” contains photos from the rich Photographic Archive of the National Archaeological Museum. The photos present views of the project of salvaging the antiquities of its Collections in the period before the Nazi occupation of Athens, during the Second World War.

The main building of the National Archaeological Museum was founded on 3rd October of 1866 and its construction was based on architectural plans by the architects E. Ziller and L. Lange. A second expansion of the Museum building had been completed a short time before October 1940, on plans by the architect G. Nomikos, offering valuable additional space to the Museum. A short time before the beginning of the war, official committees were set up in Greece, and similar groups of officials were created in other countries, with the purpose of organizing the protection of Museum antiquities and related official guidelines were issued.

In the last months of 1940 to April 1941, marble and bronze sculptures, pottery, terracotta figurines and other ancient works of the National Archaeological Museum were packed and placed in boxes or buried in pits excavated in exhibition rooms, for safe storage away from war dangers, especially destruction caused by air raids. During the war, the antiquities were stored in safe hiding areas below the floors of the rooms of the old building and mainly in the basements of the new annex of the Museum, covered with sand to a height of 3-4 m.

In March 1946, near the end of the war, the scientific and technical personnel of the Museum with the direction of its director Christos Karouzos and the invaluable aid of Semni Papaspyridi Karouzou, Ephor of Vases and Minor Artefacts, started to dig out the antiquities from their hiding places and to restore them in view of the Museum re-opening. The opening of the first post-war exhibition was inaugurated in 1947, whereas building reconstruction works continued in the Museum during the 1950s.  

The ancient masterpieces illustrated in photographs of this Exhibition were protected during World War II and they are nowadays exhibited in the National Archaeological Museum. The analog photographic material here offers data on aspects of modern history.   

 

 

Multipurpose hall of Its Kale

Duration: 24.9 – 2.10.2022

Mon. – Fri.: 18:00 – 22:00

Sat. – Sun.: 10:00 – 14:00 & 18:00 – 22:00

 

In collaboration with Momus – Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, National Archaeological Museum and Archaeological Museum of Ioannina

© Antonella Simonelli

“Place”

Group exhibition as part of Photocitizens

 

The Photocitizens International Photography Festival was founded in 2015. Its goal is to connect undergraduate and graduate photography students around the world with international photography festivals, galleries and arts organizations. Its latest event brought together collaborators from Italy, France, Greece, Vietnam, Lebanon, Spain, the US, Ireland, New Zealand and the UK to research, collaborate and showcase future talent. From now until July 2023, various exhibitions will be held around the world.

 

“It is by knowing where you stand that you grow able to judge where you are.”

Eudora Welty

 

For many of those on the planet fortunate enough to own a passport and afford a ticket, the ability to travel and to experience new places has been central to work and leisure. Travel has been a rite of passage or reward, the physical embodiment of corporate takeover, connection for extended families, a gateway to new employment, a fresh start and adventure. For those fleeing war, famine, persecution or justice, the ability to change places has been a necessity, not a luxury. Since its inception, photography has been the medium through which we have recorded these experiences, sharing them through photographic exhibitions, books, prints and now on the many online platforms we scroll through.

However, since March 2020, COVID-19 has literally changed the face of our planet. Between 11 March 2020, when the W.H.O declared COVID-19 a pandemic, and 22 February 2021, nearly 105,000 movement restrictions were implemented around the world (IOM, 2021a). Migration flows to OECD countries are estimated to have fallen by 46 per cent in the first half of 2020; a historical low. (OECD, 2020a). Birth, death and population demographics for years to come will register this seismic global event, and at this moment the vast majority of us are not going anywhere.

So, what does it mean for you as citizens and photographers, to be exactly where you are? Photocitizens 2022 asks you to reflect on your relationship to Place. This relationship may have significantly altered during the course of the pandemic, perhaps becoming more important in some way. Place can mean roots, cultural connection, home and family. But place can also confine, exclude, isolate and intimidate. The image may help us to understand something of our life or the life of those around us. It might communicate something precious or perilous, remembered, imaginary, or absolute.

 

 

Mandrassa, Veli Mosque

Duration: 24.9 – 2.10.2022

Mon. – Sun.: 18:00 – 22:00

 

In collaboration with Photocitizens International Photography Festival

© Newsha Tavakolian – Magnum Photos

“Testimonies – Glances”

1971 – 2021: Médecins Sans Frontières and Magnum 50 years in the field

 

For 50 years, Médecins Sans Frontières and Magnum Photos cover the same areas of intervention: war zones, humanitarian crises, natural disasters, emergencies. They share the same ethics and the same principles, in particular independence. MSF’s fiftieth anniversary is an opportunity to retrace decades of fortuitous or voluntary collaborations, which gave birth to a project that is both narrative and visual. This exhibition presents a selection of 19 photographic themes from Magnum archives, testifying to the main humanitarian crises, from 1971 to the present day. It is supplemented by a series of short stories productions that highlight four current crises in which MSF is committed to.

 

Photographers: Abbas (IR), Enri Canaj (AL), Raymond Depardon (FR), Thomas Dworzak (DE), Stuart Franklin (UK), Hiroji Kubota (JP), Yael Martinez (MX), Lorenzo Meloni (IT), Paolo Pellegrin (IT), Gilles Peress (FR), Chris Steele-Perkins (UK), Cristina Garcia Rodero (ES), Moises Saman (ES/US), Jerome Sessini (FR), Newsha Tavakolian (IR)

 

 

Photometria Photography Center (PPC) (184, 21st of Fevrouariou str.)

Duration: 24.9 – 11.12.2022

Thu. – Sun.: 17:00 – 21:00

Parallel Voices

 

Group exhibition of the 9 selected portfolios of the Parallel Voices competition

 

“Desired constellations” – Giacomo Infantino (IT),  “Where the river runs mute” – Sakis Dazanis (GR), “Inarticulate Silences” – Antonis Panagopoulos (GR), “ID” – Stephie Grape (GR), “Volver” – Mauro Curti (IT), “The white line” – Rosa Rodriguez (ES), “The journey of the monk” – Lefteris Paraskevaidis (GR), “Outlook (Views from the North East)” – Mark Adams (GB), “Niewybuch” – Natalia Kepesz (PL) 

 

 

Outdoor area of the house of Pyrsinellas – Municipal Regional Theater

Duration: 24.9 – 28.10.2022

“Desired constellations”, Giacomo Infantino

 

The human intellect has been engaged for centuries in the will to quantify the time elapsed since the creation of things. The stratification of the ages, the epochal changes, the evolution of the human species and its habitat have been objects of specific studies aimed at the representation of what is most emblematic: the flow of time.

A scientific journey to the unknown that reports real data on phenomena light years far from us, such as that of the stars:

through gyroschronology it was possible to establish the exact age of these celestial bodies of which we see only the glow.

A journey through time simultaneous to the experience of the present: this is what happens when we observe a star located a thousand light-years from us.

Observing a photograph we can experience the same temporal short circuit through which we experience the flow of time, which in turn becomes a tool to observe something that exists only in its past form. The human species has always developed questions, doubts, and, finally, theories on the latent dimension of time, from the cosmogonic rhythms of the stars up to the scientific method.

Time crystallizes, similar to the stalagmites of a cave, its presence. Its trace becomes the main source of study and so Desired Constellation follows an imaginary timeline through which it is possible to join two dimensions, one opposite to the other, in constant dialogue with man and his representation.

From prehistoric caves to Roman quarries abandoned in the twentieth century after the arrival of the Nazis, from seemingly uncontaminated contexts up to those more anthropized, Desired Constellation brings into allegorical dialogue the most archaic

dimensions of the territory together with the contemporary ones, navigating through a timeline in which future and past peer at each other, opening the doors to collective and mystified imagination.

“Where the river runs mute”, Sakis Dazanis

 

Vovousa is a mountain village at an altitude of 1000 meters in East Zagori, Epirus. The annual summer festival was the reason I did the route for the first time. From then on I always came back and met locals and visitors who wanted to experience the vibrations and be influenced by the authenticity of the landscape.

The name Vovousa derives from the word “voi”(=roar), the noise of Aoos river crossing the village. What I heard instead, was the fascinating and intriguing silence of the riverscape so evocative and promising. The inhabitants of the area, Vlachs in their majority, are engaged in logging, animal husbandry, and tourism.

The meadows of Lygos, the mountain peaks of Valia Calda, and the dense fir forest that reflected in the Aoos river were a deja vu.

Like the amniotic fluid, the river flow drives us back to the womb, the reign of oblivion; an allegory for the birth, death, and rebirth cycle.

The project is an ode to the beauty of the pristine mountain landscape, the mild human intervention, and an invitation for the modern man to reconsider his current problematic relationship with the natural habitat. An awareness of the landscape as a valuable heritage can be profitable and future-safe.

“Niewybuch”, Natalia Kepesz

 

“Niewybuch” gives an insight into the world of military camps, a phenomenon that has experienced a massive influx in Poland in recent years. In addition to being taught military basics, children and young people are playfully indoctrinated in obedience, fearlessness, and patriotism. Between fake blood, drill, and the unreserved use of weapons, the work raises the question of the emotional effects of military education and addresses the tension between a child’s search for adventure and the excesses of the Polish military cult.

“Outlook (Views from the North East)”, Mark Adams

 

During a recent assessment of the vulnerability of European countries, the UK is high on the list of nations who could be impacted dramatically by rising sea levels caused by climate change. ‘Outlook’ reflects on part of this affected landscape – the coastal region of the North East of England. In photographs made between 2015-2021, a transitional period is mapped – a time when Britain is contemplating its identity as an island nation, its independence, and the looming issue of climate change. This ongoing project is motivated by the intersecting subjects of coastal architecture, natural, artificial, and cultural topographies as resistant structures or symbols. The process of walking provides the impulse for making these film-based images which explore coastal paths, sparsely populated seafronts, borders, boundaries, and domestic architecture on the edge of land.

In my practice, walking is an instrument of contemplation, establishing conditions through the rhythms that mediate between departure and arrival. As Rebecca Solnit once remarked ‘The rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking and the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage through a series of thoughts’ (2000 pp.5-6)

The project avoids classic tropes of documentary photography that deal with the immediate and visible, instead the images indirectly explore perceived threats – sea levels, tides, embankments, sea defenses — potential consequences or responses to climate change that lie beyond the horizon. The inward gaze towards architecture and the natural topography of the land is presented here in relation to the horizon, providing a space for contemplating what one might call home and security.

`Moving is not strange to me, both physically and emotionally I am most comfortable in motion. For me, being in motion itself provides a sense of stability — having left but not yet being there’

References: Rendell. J, (2002) Travelling the distance/Encountering the Other, Blarney D (ed.), Here, There, Elsewhere. London. Open Editions Solnit, R. (2000). Wanderlust: a history of walking. London. Penguin.

“Volver”, Mauro Curti

 

An exploration of my inner self through the return to my hometown. The province of Cuneo, in the northern Italian region of Piemonte, seeing it with new eyes after many years of living out of the country. The need to establish a new connection with it. A medium format analog camera, a car, a good pair of shoes. «Volver» is a research on the relationship between man and territory, my own personal conflicts, the idea of family and belonging.

Is the reality in which I grew up with its places, people, and beliefs. Memory, absence, home. What is gone and what sooner or later will also disappear. This project is my attempt to maintain and preserve a living connection with a past that is becoming history. Freezing small fragments before they melt. Because everything is impermanent.

“Inarticulate silences”, Antonis Papagopoulos

 

Silences everywhere.

Declarations of loneliness, absence, alienation, abandonment.

They preceded the pandemic and will continue to exist after it.

The coronavirus brought them out and the confinement took them off.

They are nourished by the empty gaze, the stillness, the absence, the lack.

Life stopped. And we look dumb in front of the swamp.

Silences everywhere. Scattered. Inarticulate.

“ID”, Stephie Grape

 

A research in progress regarding the last years, concerning sex identity during the time point of transition from innocence to adulthood. A binary question for the expression of sexuality, eroticism, the desire for emotional safety, and how these needs reflect in the physical field. Trying to know myself better through the photographic process, I started choreograph other people’s bodies with shapes and forms to discover that body exists and breathes through the actions that each of us performs. It is the place where identities are generated and regenerated constantly to accept and defy them later, with only one guarantee, their authenticity.

Nowadays, the sex identity is coming through its revolutionary era trying to surpass the imposed social norm, as a result of years of patriarchy with the aim to create a “new identity” which is part of a universal identity more reconciled and absolved.

“The white line”, Rosa Rodriguez

 

Avast ice desert unfolds, inhospitable and enigmatic, with untouched beauty. Where earth and sky become one.

The fragile, wildly beautiful nature of the Arctic region, lives harmoniously with harsh conditions in one of the most inhospitable parts of the planet.

The infinite nature of the Arctic world contrasts with the insignificance of human life. An imposing silence pervades everything, providing a profound sense of peace and an awareness of being alive. Of being one more among all Earth’s beings.

The Arctic’s inhabitants enjoy the serenity and simplicity associated with the origins of human life; they live connected to nature. The shadowless, white landscape teaches us once again to look, to discover every detail of this untameable land. The White Line speaks of the Arctic region as the place to return to the original serenity and simplicity of the human being, it describes the white immensity of the Arctic and the peoples that inhabit it in harmony with nature.

Photographs taken between 2016 and 2019 in the Arctic Circle, in the regions of Kulusuk and Qaanaaq in Greenland, Yamalia in Siberia, and Norwegian and Finnish Lapland.

 

Arctic Circle 66° 33′

“The journey of the monk”, Lefteris Paraskevaidis

 

The Journey of the Monk is about the link between personal memory and individual identity. How the life and decisions of our elders affect and shape our identity.

My grandfather was born in 1908, and died in 1975 at the age of 67, on the same day that my older brother was born. That was five years before I was born. In his lifetime he lived through two world wars, one civil war, and spent a good portion of his life as a monk in Mount Athos (the Holy Mountain as it is usually referred in Greek). When he left monasticism, he returned to his birthplace which is the village Rapsani at the foot of Mount Olympus. There, he started a family and provided by working as a shepherd, a farmer, and a worker at the railways. I was named after him; Lefteris. I have always been wondering about what could make someone become a monk, and even more, why change their mind and return to secular life after 11 years.

Based on what I knew about my grandfather, I was never certain on what exactly shaped my identity the most. The fact that he chose the monastic life? The fact that he abandoned it afterwards? His views on faith? His disposition? All these thoughts were always in my mind. And the bond between us was very personal and strong; even though I had never met him.

A few years back I began to seek out answers. My research was somewhat easier since I am not a religious person, and therefore I was not concerned by dogmatic viewpoints. The information I had from my mother was sparse. I remember her saying “grandad was quite reserved”. I kept pressing her for reminiscences from her childhood. Later on, I started questioning other relatives and acquaintances of him, anybody who could give me information, and also going through family material.

All that I learned surprised me. My grandfather appeared to be much different than the man I had shaped in my mind; kinder and more sensitive. If I knew (when I was young) what I know now, perhaps I would have developed myself a different identity. This series is attempting to relive the memories and rebuild a past life that I had lived indirectly; implicitly, based on some little stories from here and there. And like a poetic journey, my research will still go on as long as possible, even though the photographic aspect of this project is completed.

“ENTEFXIS”

 

Group exhibition of 23 photographic clubs of “ENTEFXIS”

 

Art8 – Agrinio

Bleach kollektiv for visual arts – Athens

METApolis – Athens

Photoerevnites – Athens

Photography Lab PhotoProletarii – Athens

Shashin Lovers – Athens

art.A’s PhotoGroup FOA

Fwtoart –  Photography group of Arta

Veria photographic team “Antithesis”

”Efodos” Drama

The egg 5+1 clicks together – Igoumenitsa

”F” Thessaloniki

”Fotoporoi” Thessaloniki

Center for Creative Photography of Thrace

FOSPI – Photoclub Ioannina

Kavala Photo Club

Corinthian Photography Club

Larissa Photography Club – ”FLL”

A.S.T.O. – we communicate

Photography club of Patras ”IDIFOS”

Photography Club of Filippiada Kadrw

The voice in the Picture – Halandri

Lefki The Photography and Film Club of Chania

 

 

Cultural Center of Ioannina (Agias Marinas 55)
Duration: 24.9 – 2.10.2022

Mon. – Sun.: 18:00 – 22:00

2nd Student Awards 2022

 

Exhibition of the 4 best portfolios of the competition Photometria Student Awards 2022,

judged by Lila Zotou!

 

Curation by Ioulia Ladogianni and Tasos Papadopoulos!

 

 

-1 Gallery, The Lounge Bar (Pargis Square)

Duration: 24.9 – 2.10.2022

Mon. – Sun.: 10:00 – 22:00

&

Φolk (Zappa 3)

Tues. – Sun.: 19:00 – 00:30