Press Release
Photography Exhibition
Nana Karamagkioli
On January 18, 2019, at 20:00, a photography exhibition by Nana Karamagkioli will be inaugurated at the iFocus gallery (Akadimias 17 and Hippokratous 13, inside the Opera Arcade). The exhibition will last until February 5.
The exhibition is organized by the Photographic Circle and iFocus, curated by Platon Rivellis, with the sponsorship support of the Olympus photographic cameras representation.
Nana Karamagkioli - Biography
Nana Karamagkioli was born in Thessaloniki in 1951. She studied Business Secretarial Support (Secrétariat de Direction) in Geneva (1969). She worked as a knitwear designer and founded the Ragno store on Charitos Street (1978). She began to engage with photography (1976) and attended photography classes (1981). She co-founded and directed the Fotokhoros photographic equipment store (1984) and co-founded the Photographic Circle association (1987), serving as its vice-president. She worked as an interior decorator and published photo albums (Mikra Seira and Nea Mikra Seira Fotokhorou) and participated in all the collective publications of the Photographic Circle. She exhibited her photographs in solo exhibitions in Athens and Thessaloniki and participated in all the group exhibitions of the Photographic Circle.
The photographs of Nana Karamagkioli
and the pebbles of Kontorevythouli
It is not easy to write about the work of a photographer who, apart from being my student (literally and historically the first), apart from being a partner and director of Fotokhoros, apart from being a founding member and vice president of the Photographic Circle, is also my wife. The accumulation of these roles in Nana Karamagkioli's person is to the detriment of her apprenticeship. And it is true that Nana received the least guidance from me compared to all other photographers-students, which means less help but simultaneously more freedom.
I have always tried to bracket my personal acquaintance or sympathy with the photographers and focus on their work, and I did so (even with particular obsession) in the case of Nana. Much to my surprise, I find two things that please me. First, Nana's photographs exactly and fully correspond to Nana as the person I know, and second, her photographs have no kinship with mine in terms of world approach and use of the photographic medium. And this despite the fact that we share common perceptions and values. The reason for my joy is, therefore, reasonable, given that it proves the genuineness of Nana's expression and vindicates my teaching from the accusation of "party line."
Nana's photographic work is divided into two distinct periods. The first corresponds to the analog era, to black-and-white 35mm film, to the 35mm lens, but also to photography directed "outwards." It is more (according to the known terminology) a "window." The second corresponds to the digital era to the colored result, the square format, the freedom of using lenses, but also to photography directed "inwards." It is more a "mirror." These two periods also correspond to different organizations of her everyday life. The first was a period of travel and extroversion, and the second is the period (which continues) of choosing Syros and our new house as a permanent residence, a period of greater introversion.
These findings, although apparent, would not be so interesting if they were not internally connected with certain characteristics that express her work as a whole. The way she captured children in exotic and unknown regions does not differ in essence from how she deals with familiar objects in her internal spaces. With discretion, tenderness, and a certain melancholy.
The concern over form led to some changes that matched the new themes and photography method without betraying the timeless approach. The strict but never exaggerated form of the black-and-white period, a form that at no point undermined her humanistic approach, transformed into a freer frame treatment and (remarkably) into a completely subjective use of color that moves on the edge of verisimilitude and truth. The many but strictly distributed pieces of information of the black-and-white period were replaced by the bold highlight of a detail as the main focus of the photograph while everything around it turned into a scenic space.
However, these two photographic periods are also connected with another theme that runs through them, which also follows the technical and formal changes mentioned above. It concerns the large series of portraits of friends that Nana has been collecting for thirty years and which constituted the content of her exhibition exactly one year ago. In the current exhibition, these portraits are omitted, and the emphasis is placed on the colored square photographs of the last ten (digital) years, with the addition of limited samples of work from the previous twenty (analog) years, to hint at continuity and highlight the changes.
Nana has integrated photography into her life, thus not burdening it with great demands and expectations that often stifle its essence. With her photographs, she does not attempt to build a work. She simply accompanies her life, marking her path through it with photographic pebbles, like the fairy tale of "Kontorevythouli." Her love for her friends, her knowledge of colors, the houses she designs, oversees, and cares for, our trips and excursions, all constitute the yeast of her photographic world. Because I am also part of her yeast, I find it difficult, admittedly, to deal with her work as a teacher and curator. I became a pebble myself.
Plato Rivellis
Photographs
Opening
