No man’s land
Portfolio created: 1997
The places were all unknown to me. I arrived there a total stranger.
My mind kept going back to those legends that had enchanted me in the first place. I started my journeys without a clear idea in my mind.
I headed for Dover. Not only because the name itself attracted me as a frontier land, but also because it was the fastest way to the sea. It was cold, foggy and deserted. It was a border no doubt, a boundary. I could see the traces-scars of an unsettled situation. It seemed to me that there was an endless battle going on, right there, between man and nature. I could see the ruins of an ambitious human conquest: huge cement blocks, docks, and seawalls. Constructed landscapes which disappeared with the early tide in the morning mist and then reappeared taking back their usual place.
I always arrived there late, sometimes hours later, sometimes years after. I discovered what had taken place from tracking down the remaining spoils of the transient victory. Though who the victor was I could not tell.
I started searching for those traces, as if I was yet another collector of the coast like those wondering around with metal detectors.
Gradually, I stopped being just an observer. I became an active correspondent who sent passionate reports from a “front” which lay years away.
Gaze into matter
Portfolio created: 1996
The building had caught my eye for quite a long time. In the middle of vacant land and impressively crafted, though not «ostentatious», it rose slowly and intelligently next to the other city’s museum, the Archaeological. Its structure and character, its gradual and disciplined development in that shapeless site in the centre of Thessaloniki, attracted my attention from the very start. I began to watch it evolve. Later, when called upon to photograph it, I spent more than thirty days wandering in its empty rooms and corridors.
I walked in its courts and balconies, climbed its stairs, went up to its roof and and had a look down. After a number of visits, the concept of a walk began to grow in me as the building seemed to gradually accept to work with me. Every single part of it acquired its own unique time, a bright moment that made it shine unveiling all its qualities.
A moment later, it retreated in the background where it came from, and another part took the centre stage. One could witness an orchestrated alternation between light and shadow, as if listening to an ensemble of musical instruments, each one playing solo and then withdrawing in a meticulous, yet fascinating precision.
The photographs in this portfolio are nothing more than privileged encounters with the light during my walks in an empty museum. A visual promenade in Kyriakos Krokos’ architecture.
