Ta Nea (People Insert, 2000)
Smaras Agiakatsika, “Double Sides”, 1999
Stratos Kalafatis, “Archetypal Images”, Agra, 2000
Any 'effect' in art must be convincing that it exists, not simply because it can be done, but because it gives birth to something that would not exist without it. What is born, the result, the work, should not refer to the 'effect,' showing that it owes its existence to it. After its use, the 'effect' should disappear, giving its place to the work. However, the use of 'effects,' as derived from the French etymology of the word, is usually chosen to produce an impressive result. And it usually does nothing to hide it.
The artistic 'effect' ensures the three necessary conditions for commercial success in the new artist: impressiveness, ease, and labeling. These characteristics aim to create an artistic commodity accessible to a large part of the audience ('ease'), perceived with the high speed required by today's artistic 'market' and media ('impressiveness'), and, finally, recognizably (equally quickly and easily) due to an obvious identity, and for this reason, obviously external ('label').
Smaras Agiakatsika was formerly a professional photographer and professor in the photography department at TEI. Her book 'Double Sides,' self-published last year, is (if I'm not mistaken) her first official and public artistic presentation. All the book's photographs consist precisely of an 'effect': double exposures, that is, photographing two subjects on the same frame of the negative, trying to produce a new, third, composite image.
This is exactly where the 'sin' lies. This third composite image is rarely presented to us. And not only in this book but, I dare say, in the history of photography. Thus, the (in my opinion) failure of the photographer was almost expected. She failed where all others had failed. If one can remember a good double-exposed image in the history of photography, it is an exception. Almost none of the book's photographs achieved the transformation that would justify the formalistic choice of such a strong and impressive element. The viewer remains a viewer of two different photographs, wondering why this confusion is imposed on them. In such cases of bold choices, especially in the mixture of two images, the real 'work' is little different from a 'smudge.' And in this case, the term 'smudge' is not used metaphorically and derogatorily. The only reason for an artist to engage in such a perilous adventure is to be driven by a substantial artistic need and to challenge themselves to use the 'effect' and not be used by it. The inwardness of their intention, always combined with their photographic aesthetic knowledge, may (just possibly) protect them from the 'smudge.' They must, however, have the necessary artistic clarity, intelligence, and integrity to reject it, even retrospectively.
I know Smaras Agiakatsika and believe in her abilities. I don't think the choice of this particular mannerism helped her, while it possibly, unintentionally, marked her work with elements of useless impressiveness. The greatest difficulty in art, and consequently in photography, is simple description. The choice of complex description should be another path to simplicity, and the ultimate goal should remain the absolute artistic proposition. However, the risk is visible that along the way, the goal may be lost (as happened here), resulting in a work that is externally complex but internally dismantled.
The also new photographer Stratos Kalafatis fared much better with his (first) book “Archetypal Images” from Agra Publications. He chose an 'effect' again, moving in the perilous environment of 'pinhole' or 'pinhole camera,' a photographic machine consisting of basics: a black box and a tiny hole instead of a lens. The results of this machine usually fall within the aforementioned realm of impressiveness, ease, and labeling. It is characteristic here (as in the above case of double exposures) that we cannot find in the whole of the qualitative artistic photographic production a structured work of a good photographer based on the pinhole camera. The impressive, dreamlike, and recognizable forms of the pinhole create a slippery and inclined plane, on which the artist has a high chance of sliding. However, Kalafatis managed to steer the wheel, perhaps because he focused his interest, not on how to use the machine's impressiveness to declare something impressive himself, but on how to tame the machine's impressiveness, to end up with something simple. Knowledge of the machine proved to be knowledge of photography.
In many of the book's photographs (all depicting nude and strange landscapes), his attempt remains hanging in the balance or fails, rendering photos not bad, but indifferent (and this can be considered, from one perspective, even worse). Such are several of those where a specific object (e.g., a concrete column) has been placed in the center of the image, 'decoratively,' that is, 'superficially,' complemented by the dark space of the pinhole 'vignetting.' However, there are the utterly successful ones, which relate to each other with a characteristic element that denotes an emptiness and a silence. Their minimalism is eloquent and rich. Here, almost a sense of a refusal of description is created. The result is an absolute image, simultaneously austere and provocative. Such are the photographs on pages 5, 15, 16, 18, 21, 25, 33.
On the negative side of the publication, which, like all books from Agra Publications, is distinguished for its quality, I would place the title (why so pompous?), the nude photograph of the photographer's wife on the first page as a dedication (perhaps from American influences?), the isolated photographs (when there is such intense and charming form, we don't break it, we protect it), and (as always) the double-page photographs (gentlemen designers, a photograph has unity, it is not a decorative element). However, these comments cannot in any way affect the enjoyment of some good photographs in the book, so good that even done with pinhole, they surpassed it."
Plato Rivellis