Exposition text (Zappeion, 2009)
The photograph of this ruin was taken in 1997 in Cyprus, following my invitation by the Cultural Department of the Cyprus Ministry of Education, aiming to create an album by three Greek and three Cypriot photographers.
The photograph was captured in a completely demolished Cypriot village named Agios Sozomenos.
The associations one can make by combining the location with the depicted ruin are obvious. They could be even more specific if the caption identified the entities responsible for the building's collapse and possibly the reasons for it. For this reason, I would prefer the photograph not even to have a caption mentioning its place of origin. The abstract and ambiguous title 'Ruin' suffices for me.
I believe and support that photography can and should simply describe. Anything else deprives it of depth and adulterates its identity. I would not want the viewer to think they see in this photograph the barbarity of some, as no barbarity presents artistic interest on its own, nor just the carcass of a house, since in this case the logical subject would be a brand-new house. However, I hope one can discern my admiration for the charm of a ruin. The balance and harmony emerging from how this photograph highlights what remains of a house. The fact that this ruin is not just the shadow of a structure but a standalone and new entity in time. Beauty exists only through contradiction. And time can often add beauty. The non-reconciliation with ruins is also a non-reconciliation with time. After all, real love exists and is expressed towards something that has passed, existed, ultimately revealing its weakness, expressing the inevitable journey of all back to the earth. A building is perfectly beautiful when it remains a beautiful ruin. The Parthenon stands before our eyes as undeniable proof of this assertion.
The reasons why I chose this particular photograph of mine to participate in a group exhibition dedicated to Democracy should not be clear (nor would I desire them to be). However, one could always, abstractly and somewhat arbitrarily as art calls when expressing ideologies, seek in this photograph analogies that may link such a beautiful and harmonious ruin with a regime we all support as the best, while also recognizing its weaknesses.
If Democracy is the best system mankind has invented, it is because it is an imperfect scheme supported by the imperfections of people and societies. Democracy's strength lies in reconciling these imperfections and contradictions. There are other systems with much prettier and more attractive structures. But their collapse is always tragic, ugly, and dead-end. Democracy always stands because even when it seems to collapse, it is capable of presenting another face, different yet always beautiful. Democracy is like all things and people we love, whose weaknesses and flaws over time we learn to know and value, even appreciate, realizing they are always a reflection of their virtues. Democracy is like the old living materials, like iron or wood, that know how to age and become more beautiful through our care.
If a system does not show the beauty of its weaknesses, it will be like a house that never learned to age, like a ruin that no one imagined could continue to be loved.
However, at this point, it's best to let the ruin of the photograph continue its photographic life and Democracy to reconcile its own contradictions, because the obsession with analogies between art and ideologies risks subjugating the former to the latter, with art usually proving to be the weaker.
Plato Rivellis