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.
Mare Liberum
Portfolio ongoing since 2000
Mare Liberum was introduced by Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), as the very first concept of International Waters. According to his law after a certain distance away from the shore the sea was considered free to travel and belonged equally to all those sailing on it.
Far from any national or international claim, any commercial use, any kind of transportation, sport or leisure, the sea make us travel if only by looking at it. Our gaze drifts for hours when looking along the horizon, our mind visits thousands of places, hundreds of faces, feelings and moments in a split of a second. Looking at the sea, I feel, we return to the place we call home. There, only there, we are free.
The photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto, whose work is a key reference in this body of work, writes: Water and air. So very commonplace are these substances, they hardly attract attention. Yet, they vouchsafe our very existence.
Athens Spread
Portfolio created: 2012
Athens Spread portfolio attempts to address the issue of the modern greek city in endless expansion, towards all directions with no regards to any natural or manmade limits; hiding also a wretched central area into a sea of swelling concrete structures. Nature as well as people end up deeply injured by this condition.
Dr. Kiki Kafkoula, professor at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki has noted:
“As things stand the Greek cities do not nurture human communities neither do they foster historical traditions nor even nature. To survive they need to grow up and as if recovering from a child disease distance themselves from an auto-pilot process of private speculation that destabilizes them and undermines their creative perspective”.
The large scale photographic works created for the 2012 13th Venice Biennale of Architecture focus on the face of the capital, this ancient and at the same time very new Metropole, endeavoring to narrate its history and avoiding beautifying or covering its shortcomings. On the contrary, while keeping a proper distance they offer an accurate survey of the contemporary urban development and its outcome.
Athens NowHere
Portfolio created: 2016
The African dust arriving from the South covers the city of Athens, once again. Every few years, the phenomenon reoccurs hiding the city from the face of the earth leaving behind a sence of uneasiness, as if we have lost our way, our sense of direction.
It so happens that for long time now this is exactly how we feel. Lost.
For many years anger has been alternating with grief, shame with fear, while the horror of imminent disaster leaves us empty, staring into a void. It has been quite some time that our lives are regulated by sophisticated financial terms: recession, inflation, IMF, sustainable economic growth, spreads… Each and every one of us watches events unfold, silently, in front of the TV screen, or loudly, in the streets outside.
Yet, there comes a moment when one wonders how did we come to this? How were we so mistaken in thinking that our future could be better, our children would have the same opportunities we had and live a better life than their parents? It appears that this is not the case anymore. Obvious as it may seem now, we were caught off guard, and life changed on us while we were not paying any attention.
Located between East and West, literally as well as metaphorically, we permitted our cities to expand in order to accommodate people coming from all over the country to seek a better future in the capital. Nearly half the population gradually gathered in Athens forcing the city to spread towards all directions. We created a private home with little regard for public space. We silently accepted illicit construction only because it was deemed “democratic”. We bent the rules, took certain liberties and once the final outcome was out there for us to grasp, we remained in awe of how chaotic it really looked.
Athens Nowhere looks at the face of this ancient and at the same time contemporary city, in an attempt neither to beautify nor to cover any of its shortcomings but to narrate its story as it unfolds. It takes a critical distance and looks the cityscape for what it really is: the cause of actions and its effect.
The cityscapes under heavy dust presented in the portfolio are portraits of a country under constant stress, faced with both financial and moral collapse. At the same time, they represent a return to the basic qualities that make this country what it is, a land that extends hospitality and solidarity to all those in need of a helping hand and a safe refuge. They are my day and night, the reality I experience and the dream I hope for.
They are the country I, too, helped to bring to its knees – and the country I too need to rebuild from the beginning.
This is my country. I intend to stay.
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.
