Article in the Athens Review of Books
Photography as poetry or information
I was unaware of the photographer Dimitris Papadimos (1914-1994) until I came across a comprehensive and interesting album of his photographs, which came into the possession of the Educational Foundation of the National Bank (MIET) through a series of donations. It is well known that we owe great gratitude to this Foundation, its director, and the curator of this particular edition, Mr. Dionysis Kapsalis, for their significant exhibitions and generally admirable publications.
The first observation from reading this book is entirely positive, concerning the serious, specific, comprehensible, and documented texts that introduce the edition, signed by Mrs. Matthildi Pyrli, Mrs. Vasiliki Chatzigeorgiou, Mrs. Heba Farid, and Mr. Kostis Liontis. From these texts, the reader learns what they hope to know – and much more – with clarity and completeness. Among them, there is no text by a photography specialist discussing the potential artistic value of the photographs and the photographer's possible relationship with other photographers or related movements.
The absence of such a text is not an omission and is fully explained by Mr. Liontis's excellent text, which successfully identifies Dimitris Papadimos as a 'traveling photographer' rather than an artist photographer. He compares Papadimos to photographers of the American FSA agency, meaning the reporters rather than celebrated creators like Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, who were dismissed as unsuitable photographers for making art. He also compares Papadimos's work to that of National Geographic, known for its photographs but not for their artistic essence.
As informed by the accompanying texts, Dimitris Papadimos worked for several years as a photojournalist for various Greek news and current affairs magazines. He photographed Greece, especially Athens, in the post-war years, and many artists, both Greek and foreign friends of Greece, who were emblematic presences during the 1950s and 1960s, from Seferis and Katsimbalis to Lawrence Durell. As an Egyptian Greek (born in Cairo where he also completed his schooling), he extensively photographed Egypt and other Arab countries.
His photographs are precious to us because they connect us with moments of our history and with corners of our city and country, as well as with people, who although part of our recent past, also seem so distant. The primary element of these photographs is nostalgia, and secondarily, historical. The historical aspect is more connected with the captions and texts accompanying the photographs. Therefore, the book's design should have focused more on photographs that strongly represent this aspect and better linked them with the texts. A portrait of Seferis, for instance, would hold no interest for someone who doesn't recognize him or doesn't receive the information that it is Seferis. Similarly, a photograph of an Athenian crossroad from 1960 would not interest a foreign and young viewer for the same reasons. Nonetheless, Papadimos was a straightforward and clear photographer, qualities rare among today's photojournalists, lending dignity and grace to his photographs. They are viewed calmly, their goal of capturing rather than transforming or transcending is fully achieved.
About thirty years ago, those of us involved in photography were always positive about publishing any photographic album, believing it important to hear many photographic voices. However, in the years that followed, there was a rapid promotion of photography with a hurried emphasis on its artistic aspect, resulting in an overproduction of photographic albums. The line between photographic art and photographic depiction has become blurred. Often, it seems that the more people engage with photography, the less they understand it.
Based on these observations, defining the identity of a book containing photographs has become a necessary condition for its critical approach, so that appropriate weight and content can be given both to the texts and the photographs included. The book's general form and conception will first determine its characterization as a simple book or an album. Then, if the latter is chosen, the way the photographs are presented and integrated with the texts will largely define the album's characterization as artistic, historical, or otherwise. Only then can a critical approach express an artistic (or other) opinion on the quality and style of the photographs. This confusion stems from photography's multifaceted nature, which often changes content and function depending on its use and context or the creator's intentions.
The volume and weight of this album, combined with the high quality of the photographic reproductions, lead to the conclusion that showcasing the photographs and their aesthetic value is the publication's primary goal, more so than their historical content and accompanying texts. However, the arrangement and presentation of the photographs reinforce this perspective, with large reproductions on individual pages, often one per leaf, leading the viewer to seek a special aesthetic, artistic, or creative dimension — the exact term is less important — that has an artistic content, enabling the photographs to evoke emotions through their presence and the photographic event they reveal, rather than any potential information they convey. However, the absence of transformation, which is missing in most of the album's photographs, is the core or distinguishing difference that shifts a photograph from being mere information to visual poetry, allowing it to claim (merely claim) a place in the realm of art.
The best photographs of Papadimos achieve information transfer without exaggeration and with immediacy. However, when the subject matter strays from simple and clear information, it often succumbs to stereotypes in content and form. When information becomes insignificant and given, like a bucolic scene with sheep, a chapel, a fisherman, a fellah, a small church, or a likable donkey, both the editor and the viewer fall into the trap of trying to lead the interpretation of the photograph towards more poetic paths, usually with disappointing results.
These clichéd and often folkloric themes are presented in a straightforward and honest manner – their virtue – but without the necessary transcendence that could have been achieved with a more dynamic and personal stamp by the photographer, transforming the insignificant and often trite real-world event into a significant event of a photographed world, which is essential for a good photograph that cannot merely contain information. However, the editors of the collection and publication, out of love for the significant work of the photographer, exceeded the real identity of his photographs in their selection and presentation.
I do not know if Dimitris Papadimos had such artistic desire or goal, or if, on the contrary, he limited himself to the most significant role of recording and depiction to better enjoy his reality and preserve our memory, along with earning a decent and honest living. The dignity of his photographs and his straightforwardness incline me to favor this latter interpretation. I also do not know if the photographer was aware of the photographic work of major European and American artist photographers or if he was influenced by any of them.
However, comparing Papadimos's work with that of Voula Papaioannou and Dimitris Harisiadis, to stay within our own circle of creators, will show these differences. Papaioannou, and even the more professional Harisiadis, in many of their photographs aimed for and achieved transcendence of their subject and its transformation into a photographic event. The personality of Papaioannou, for example, is present and dominant in her best photographs, which are not few, managing to generate interest that goes beyond the event itself. The viewer does not need to accompany her photographs with information or connect them with memories, as they can evoke emotion almost independently of what they depict. The photographs themselves become Proust's madeleines, sparks of artistic intensity, which of course include both memory and reality.
Therefore, by choosing to feature many, large, full-page photographs with little or insignificant information, the publication (and our interest) was directed towards an artistic value of the photographs, which they do not seem to claim and certainly do not achieve. As information diminishes, so does the absence of artistic transformation and visual poetry. This does not mean that the significance of this photographic archive and the publication is minor. It simply brings to the forefront the problem of evaluating each photograph and the need to determine its identity. If once photography was mistakenly considered only a medium of information and depiction, today it is generally and indiscriminately, also mistakenly, regarded as a work of artistic creation.
Plato Rivellis