I have known Andreas Schoinas closely for the last twenty-five years. He was my student. He has been and remains my most permanent collaborator. I respect and admire him. Yet, even for me, he remains an enigma. Therefore, I have concluded that the mystery of his personality is partly responsible for his exceptionally multifaceted - and only seemingly simple - photography.
Andreas often gives me the impression of moving in a hermetically own world as if he were just a simple guest in the world of others. He successfully adopts the social behaviors of his surroundings but ultimately always obeys his own moral and social code. This makes him sometimes appear as if he comes from another time or region. He always adapts and never assimilates.
The contradictions that characterize him are infinite. And above all, his image. Like some cartoon characters, Andreas is ageless. He is sixty years old today, but one could easily be misled by his behavior and consider him much younger. He can feel equally comfortable in a kindergarten and in a nursing home. To play with babies and discuss with the elderly. Deep down, he belongs nowhere. Not to Nikaia (of Piraeus, as he specifies), where he was born and raised, nor to Kolonaki, where he has been working for thirty years, nor to the left, the dominant political faction of his neighborhood and probably of his friends there, nor to the right, which his family voted for. Perhaps he belongs only to Olympiacos, his great passion in life, which he, however, avoids watching in stadiums, for fear of seeing them lose. Just as he loves rock music and is a great collector of vinyl records, which, however, he keeps untouched in their plastic sleeves for fear of scratching them. Or as he listens repeatedly and with emotion to Bach's St. Matthew Passion but refuses to hear any analysis or discussion about it.
Undoubtedly, however, Andreas Schoinas belongs to photography. But even this, at least on a primary level, he himself seems to question. Thus, when someone entered the "Photographic Circle" years ago and asked if he was a photographer, he was quick to deny it. Even though he already had a personal body of work, had held a few exhibitions, had published two small books, worked in our photographic association, and simultaneously made a living photographing weddings. Perhaps because for him, photography was something so significant that he did not feel authorized to invoke it.
He always admired the great photographers with respect and humility. That's why he once asked Josef Koudelka, then a visitor to the "Circle," for permission to photograph him. A permission that he was denied because evidently he did not understand that Andreas's intention was not commercial, but merely a way to express his admiration. For indeed, what other way does a photographer have than this? Just like a few years before, while we together watched a wonderful concert in London with Handel's "Saul" conducted by John Elliott Gardiner, Andreas lifted his camera from where we were sitting and took only one photograph of the scene, which he then hung in his room. Or when Bernard Plossu visited the "Circle," and Andreas offered him a handmade red leather album, which the good French photographer initially took as a gift containing photos of Andreas himself. But his surprise and puzzlement were enormous when he realized that it was an album containing all of Plossu's photographs that Andreas loved, along with photographs and a biography of the photographer. A photographic tribute.
Last but not least, the contradiction that Andreas Schoinas, since he started photographing, has almost instinctively acquired a personal style and a broad yet specific thematic direction, while he always dreamed of photographing nudes and fashion, without ever actually doing so.
Andreas's photographic journey was commonplace. He loved photography as an amateur and wanted to take some classes to improve. The sudden contact he had through the seminars of the "Photographic Circle" with the work of the great photographers was crucial for him. The admiration I initially had for his work and my esteem for him made me offer him a clerk position, initially at the "Fotochoros" store and then at our newly established association, the "Photographic Circle," of which, by the way, Andreas was a member of the Board of Directors since its founding in 1988, serving as the treasurer. This position would provide him with continuous contact with good photography, though never reaching, even from afar, the earnings of any well-known professional photographer.
Andreas took over the responsibility of the darkroom in the "Photographic Circle," resulting in daily contact with the work of young photographers, whom he advised and guided. At the same time, through the continuous organization of the books of the "Circle's" rich library, Andreas was constantly in contact with the work of famous photographers.
Andreas's work in the "Circle" never distanced him from his personal photography, although such a risk was real, given that when there is nourishment and satisfaction from contact with the photography of the famous and the young, one can find excuses to avoid confronting one's own photography and self. For Andreas, however, this process was a joy of life. Every day from home to work, photographs rained down. On selected national and religious anniversaries, the streets, churches, and festivals received Andreas's visit. And during the summer seminars of the "Circle" on the islands, Andreas, despite the workload, photographed more frequently and more than the participants. And his neighborhood was his constant and beloved subject. Although, apart from the people he photographed to whom Andreas always offered photos to thank them, his neighbors and friends probably ignored his passion and photographic achievements. For Andreas, various spaces must have their own boundaries.
For several years now, Andreas, to supplement his livelihood, began dealing with the not-so-glamorous (and often despised) professional photography of weddings and baptisms. But even in this field, Andreas quickly managed to develop and impose a personal style that fits both his photography and his character. He must be one of the few wedding photographers who go as a gift to the wedding. Andreas continues to consider himself a guest at a mystery. He is also one of the few who do not photograph during the Gospel reading. And who knows the ecclesiastical procedures and the mentality of the priests deeply. Finally, he knows how to separate the professional part of wedding photography from what concerns him. Because, of course, it would not be possible for Andreas to remain inactive in the midst of such a celebration that is every wedding. So, as soon as the mystery is completed and the obligatory family photos are taken, and after everyone starts to relax during the ensuing celebration, Andreas changes his mask and puts on that of his own photography, which complements all he has seen in the streets of Nikaia, at parades, and in churches.
Andreas has a great charisma that has nothing to do with his photographic skill but with his personality. He does not scare people with his presence. And so everyone trusts and calmly lets themselves be captured by his lens. Whether they are children, old, rich or poor, Greeks or foreigners, beautiful, indifferent, or ugly. He also has the ability and intelligence - and this time I am referring to photographic virtues – to always create (even in his relatively more insignificant photographs) an interesting frame and a solid but - I emphasize - discreet form. A form that never intervenes to disturb the content but is always present. The plethora of micro-events included in the photographs disappear under the dominant photographic event generated by his frame intervention. And the viewer always has the feeling of being guided by the photographer to the critical point that constitutes this photographic event. However, this is a deceptive feeling, as the details that make up the photograph were and are constantly present, with the only difference that they never scream. Thus, a complex photograph always presents itself as a very simple record. But what happens in the form, corresponds to the content. The laughter that Andreas Schoinas's photographs usually provoke is just the entrance door to the photograph. A more persistent viewing of it reveals in parallel - or on a second level - sometimes sadness, sometimes compassion, sometimes irony. The children in Andreas's photographs are always alone. The couples always embraced. The old are never repulsive or tragic, but rather tender. The respectable are often unrestrained, and the poor or the mad are unexpectedly serious.
Andreas's world is the most common world of today's Greek reality. Priests, celebrations, and weddings, football, processions, and ceremonies. Yet, we constantly get the impression that Andreas sees things that do not exist and presents events that do not happen. However, his gaze has learned to penetrate the obvious, and his frame to highlight the commonplace. His lens is a theatrical spotlight that simply points out and emphasizes what the public viewer can no longer discern.
Andreas is faithful to black and white. And only his professional photographs from weddings and baptisms are in color, which ensures another distinction between work and personal creation. However, Andreas's black and white never becomes pictorial. It is more a matter of character than an aesthetic choice. Andreas does not love noise, buzz, disorder, tensions. So the printing of his photographs avoids any exaggeration in contrasts. It is neither too harsh nor too soft. Even the flash he is often forced to use does not create the usual intense shadows. The photograph for Andreas must describe with the greatest possible discretion and the highest feasible fidelity. So that the surprise and emotion it may cause are not due to the obvious interventions on the paper, but to the suggestive mediation of the frame.
To date, the manual Nikon and the thirty-five-millimeter lens have become an extension of his gaze. I hope the inevitable transition to digital Nikons and the also inevitable zoom lenses will not seduce his gaze with their charm and conveniences, unless, of course, shaking him up gives rise to something new that is bound to be interesting anyway.
Andreas's curiosity often led him to other photographic subjects, different from those where his quality and style are distinguished. He thus made many portraits, even landscapes and objects. Always with quality, but in my opinion, without that personal stamp that transcends his photographic knowledge and skills and touches his character and personality.
So in this book, we collected those photographs that over the last twenty-five years come either from the celebrations of weddings, from the closed world of his neighborhood, or from babies, priests, and the elderly, in a few words, from his own world. And the choice was difficult, and it may prove to be possibly wrong and certainly insufficient, if one considers that not a week has passed in all these years without Andreas presenting me with another packet of photographs for selection.
I do not know if anyone could characterize the content of these photographs with one word. Are they humanistic? They emanate Andreas's love for people and his joy for life; do they express their relationship with the depicted subjects? Nothing is certain. Because the strength of the photographs lies in their contradictions. This is also one of the reasons that would make them unsuitable for any professional use, which requires unambiguous information.
Andreas undoubtedly approaches the photographed with love. But at the same time, he reveals their weaknesses, so that the joy of the surface is complemented, without being overshadowed, by the sadness hidden in the background. Andreas's world, wherever it comes from, has shades of a peculiar Court of Miracles. The children are more serious than one would expect and always desperately alone. The priests play a more significant role as symbols and figures of a society and less as religious officials. The spiritually and financially poor are brothers to all others, whether urban or affluent. But nothing would be so complex and dense if Andreas's peculiar humor was missing, a humor not sarcastic like Winogrand's, nor harsh like Arbus's. It's the laughter of Andreas, who ultimately, perhaps not so much loves the individuals, but their madness, their idiosyncrasy, even their misery. That's why people trust him because they recognize in his gaze the tolerance, understanding, and tenderness he feels for this world, which for him is everyone, the whole world.
And as always, Andreas has no other way to show his interest, warmth, and humor towards all these people, except only through photography, which he so loves and to which, whether he knows it or not, he entirely belongs.
Plato Rivellis