Parallel Voices 2021

Ioannis Asmis (GR)

Polydefkis Asonitis (GR)

Noemi Comi (IT)

Emilia Haar (DE)

Makis Makris (GR)

Karoline Schneider (DE)

Alexandre Silberman (FR)

Vasiliki Stamou (GR)

Vassilis Vasileiou (GR)

“Reprocess”, Ioannis Asmis

This series of images is a result of my love for the night and my interest in finding beauty in items that are nearly dead or in a state of transition. Death and what comes next is something that always triggered my mind. Reprocess is documentation about this transition. A last dance or a new beginning, are highlighted in this series. A tree that partly dies and partly revives, an old, trapped piece of furniture, a breathing hole, unprocessed marbles that are ready to be used, all separated from their surroundings, make an entry or a final exit from a theatrical scene.

“MESSOLOGGI: The city of the sea and the sky”, Polydefkis Asonitis

What draws me to photograph in Messolonghi? What makes me go there every week and often sit in hotels for days? Apparently the events that happened there, the male and female heroes and heroines who fell to defend it. However, there is something else that overwhelms you, such as the vastness of the sea, the continuous level of the land, the salt flats that are separated as photo frames, the huge asphalt paved and dirt roads that connect the land with the sea.

But the dominant element for a photographer is that Messolonghi is a huge photographic scene starring the sky, the sea, the perfectly aligned horizon and its inhabitants with their works and events.

In this setting I chose images but also created my own, in order to symbolically render what Messolonghi was for me: geometric primordial shapes, unobstructed vision, natural scenery, sea and sky without limits, without beginning and end. In other words landscape and man companions to freedom.

“Alba Lux”, Noemi Comi

Alba lux is an artistic project that combines documentation and conceptual photography. The photographs become real symbolic images, reproducing idyllic atmospheres and ineffable realities. It’s a multidisciplinary journey between spirituality and science, which begins within the earthly reality and then takes off within the otherworldly one.

The central topic of the project concern Near-Death Experiences. NDE is a profound personal experience associated with death or impending death which researchers claim share similar characteristics. In fact, although have been documented people with very different religious, political and social beliefs, their experiences have many elements in common: the presence of a strong light, a sense of bliss and changes in personality.

I found the subjects within social networks like Facebook and through personal knowledge. At first time they were very wary but after clarifying my intentions I met them.

Each experience is very different and connoted by different religious aspects. Some have experienced it positively, others were traumatized and they suffered from depression. Each story is described by three different photographs: the first two want to represent the subject and his/her changes and the third is a conceptual interpretation of the experience he/she lived. The writings inserted are texts in Italian written directly by the subjects about their experiences.

“Saudade – How much do you miss me?”, Emilia Haar

Similar to the German equivalents Heimat, Fernweh or Vorfreude, the term Saudade refers to an emotional state of melancholy and “weltschmerz”. Almost paradigmatic, the Portuguese word works as a unique tool to communicate intrinsic feelings in a poetic manner. Nevertheless, the emotional attachment, because of the deeper meaning of this word, makes a universal definition more complicated.
Saudade – How much do you miss me? offers an approach to make this term more tangible, through the medium of photography. Similar to a diptychon, two images pair as a juxtaposition of yonder and proximity, while past and present are depicted simultaneously. Accordingly, the counterpart of the image of a past journey, in this case to Japan, forms the congruence of the current everyday life, whereas the evocation of certain memories through a confrontation with the presence builds upon the factor of resemblance. For instance, this might emerge through specific forms, colors or lighting conditions. Thus, the core topic of the photographies is the subjective observation of the everyday life concerning the chance, to build a bridge to the yond by means of the recognition of emotional afflicted analogies. And even though the memory might fade away in the course of time, the immanent longing constantly presents itself as driving force to conserve the momentum for the eternity in various ways.

“Odysseus’ Clepsydra”, Makis Makris

The present project constitutes an assemblage of visual fragments deriving from candid shots and selected scenes through the lengthy process of watching assorted television broadcasts, under very special conditions compared to those of my ordinary lifestyle. It is a personal allegorical narrative inspired the Homeric epic poem, Odyssey.

Odysseus’ Clepsydra seeks the visualization of all the emotional transitions that take place during our difficult and laden with dubiousness journey into the world. The eternal inner struggle is unceasing and equivocal. Positive thoughts, dreams and desires pitted against fears and unease, not only for bygones but also for what is yet to come.

The goals we set at the dawn of our lives are often succeeded by unexpected twists and frustrations, as years turn into an incessant struggle for survival.

However, the Time we are left with is teeming with the hope of restoration of our psychological balance, so that we are ultimately led to redemption.

“Pears in the Afternoon”, Karoline Schneider

Pears in the Afternoon, is a portrait series created between 2010 and 2018.

Originally a fine artist, I swapped my brushes for a camera and my colours for photochemistry. That’s how the ‘paintings’ that I never painted emerged.

In wet plate photography, I found a suitable medium to bring my images into being. Due to its very analogue nature, its distorting effects and its slow unfolding the wet plate process comes very close to the process of painting. At the same time, I use the so-called objectivity of photography to develop my own artistic imagery.

My artistic focus is on the portrait in the broadest sense: I’m always looking for the special quality of my subject, whether person, prop or situation. 


For me, it is never about the portrait of an individual, it’s about the portrait of the human being per se. 

“DIFFERENCES & REPETITIONS”, Alexandre Silberman

“My territories are beyond grasp, and not because they are imaginary, but on the contrary, because I am in the process of outlining them.”

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Gattari, A Thousand Plateaus

Established in 1968 for the purpose of fragmenting the Île-de-France’s “red belt,” the Seine-Saint-Denis department was formed in a way that simultaneously attached it to and isolated it from Paris. Ideologically split from the concomitant capital, it was also demographically, economically, and culturally so, all while still being “the periphery of.” In opposition to Paris’s immutable heritage, the area asserted its own identity through its heterogeneity, the plurality of its voices, and the radicalness of its mutations.
As the 2024 Olympic Games loom, of which it is one of the biggest beneficiaries, the Seine-Saint-Denis finds itself caught up in monumental building sites, whose scope contrasts with the reality on the ground. Former vast agricultural plains that have become the most extensive industrial area in Europe, it is now suffering from its early urbanization. The most cosmopolitan department, but also the poorest in mainland France, it is also one of the
youngest. Facing a prominent past and a difficult current situation, Seine-Saint-Denis is entering the 2020s with lofty ambitions for the future.
At a time when an army of cranes are working the ground just as much to build a shiny future as to bury an annoying present, it is an entire territory which makes its strata appear to our eyes. Agricultural and industrial, natural and urban, poor and opulent, all these asynchronous layers make up a complex landscape, both spatial and temporal, crossed by a constant balance of power. That opposing the morbid repetition of the identical, of the established order and to reestablish, and the vigorous repetition of the difference, that of the life that disappears and springs again.
Here, the latter has never seemed so beautiful.
But it has also, unfortunately, never seemed so fragile.

“GOOD ENOUGH”, Vasiliki Stamou

Mother good enough.

It’s a piece of art through which I’ am willing to approach the relationship between mother and daughter, it is considered to be important, many-sided, defining, unnegotiable. The starting place of that photographic depiction was my own personal chase and impulsive consideration about the relationship between me and my mother.
Each photograph is an aspect of reality that describer that unique bond.
Winnicott first ever brought in the meaning of “good enough” mother who covers the basic needs of her child, but not all of them, she let it be autonomous. She makes it possible to become mature and self. Contained during adulthood. She is neither deficient, nor very kind.
Each mother should face the shadows of her own past and complete against them giving real love to her child, she can find the balance between delimitation of her own behavior and the affection that gives to her child.
In that relationship nothing is considered to be given and defined from the beginning. That kind of emotional tie is alive, being modified, contextually but mother is always “there”. It’s a cycle of life during which mother turns into daughter and daughter becomes mother. Τwo leading rοles in a woman’s life.
That internal pursuit drove me to visit women who attach themselves to that unique relationship, shooting them at their homes, as they are mirrored in my eyes, complicating a dreamy reality, balancing between their own reality and my personal imagination.

“The Voice of the Cicada”, Vassilis Vasileiou

“Oh, tranquility!

Penetrating the very rock,

A cicada’s voice.”

Matsuo Basho, Haiku  

The way that we approach our everyday life, our habits and routines reflect more or less conscious choices. The human-induced alterations on the natural environment, which surround these choices through structures and constructed spaces, as well as the objects that accompany human activity, are in a dialectical relationship, influencing us in a more impactful way than we believe they do. The purpose of this feedback process between persons, structures, objects and habitual behaviors is no other than the accomplishment of the ideal conditions, the pursuit of a comfortable life and, ultimately, a happiness that is to be found in scenes lacking heroism and drama.