12- THE GREEKS
Plato Rivellis: A photo of Greek-American Constantine Manos from his marvelous work for Greece, the Greek Portfolio, photos taken in the '60s. I feel the need to emphasize not only the artistic value of the photograph but especially the dignity emanating from these faces in Manos' photos 30 years ago, which today I find very difficult to locate and rediscover in Greek cities and villages when I go. I put this as an extra-photographic thought and leave it hanging, Andreas, I don't want to expand on this. Let's better focus on photography in Greece in general.
Andreas Pagoulatos: I would like to ask you, Platon. When do we have the beginnings of Greek photography, that is, a photograph in the Greek space?
PR: I think we can talk about an organized artistic work much later. In between, we had unique, isolated cases of people who had general sensitivity, photographic knowledge and who I don't think understood when they took a photo that they were using a photo as an expressive medium. At least not with full awareness. In the 150 years of this modern history, especially with a Turkish occupation that did not mesh with the Greek space as the Moors did in Spain, we had a significant break; it is logical that we don't have a tradition in many things. Especially in photography, considering that its international bloom happened after the '60s or in the '60s, both in terms of economic value and in terms of public appreciation, Kertesz had his first exhibition in America in the '60s. There were very few cases back then that had a broader projection like Cartier Bresson who was an exception. So, it is logical in Greece that the great flourishing followed the international flourishing. I believe that in the late '70s, photography in Greece consciously began to resonate with certain people either as viewers or creators.
AP: Weren't there any exceptions previously?
PR: Yes, there are, like several names one could say, I will refer to 2-3 that I greatly appreciate, Kostas Balafas, Voula Papaioannou. Balafas is alive, Papaioannou has died and I will include in the Greek photographers Constantine Manos with whom I started because he is second-generation Greeks in America but keeps his Greek consciousness and partly his Greek language, he is also the most famous name of a Greek even if abroad photographer, he has been many years at the Magnum agency, and I include him for this wonderful work of his Greek Portfolio, the Greek photo album which he did in the '60s, still young. Subsequently, he worked in color, did themes of America, Boston, and the like.
Constantine Manos was born in America to immigrant parents, lives in Boston but still feels strong ties with Greece. When in the mid-'60s he came for the first time to meet his ancestral land and to photograph its isolated villages, he already had photographic experience since at 19 he was the official photographer of the Boston Philharmonic. His stay in Greece left us an exceptional book, the Greek Portfolio which was also his passport to the Magnum agency, of which he has been a member since then. Without a doubt, the Greek Portfolio is the most discreet and substantial photographic collection on Greece. Manos approaches the poor Greeks with respect, clothes their rags with dignity and captures the moments of work or leisure with timeless ritualistic austerity.
After several photographic propositions themed around the city of Boston, Manos offered us a new significant collection this time in color with images from America whose paradox in coincidences, colors, and forms prevails and gives new breath and content to the work of this serious Greek-American photographer.
AP: Is there a Greek perspective that leads to a certain aesthetic? To some specific aesthetics?
PR: Look, when Constantine Manos came 30 years ago and took those marvelous photos in Greek villages. If I am not mistaken, he had mainly chosen villages that hadn't even gotten electricity yet. This work, whether done by a foreigner or a Greek, would be good if that person had quality, sensitivity, and an artistic eye. I cannot discern in the photos whether the person taking them is Greek or foreign, woman or man or has certain characteristics.
Epirot Kostas Balafas always saw photography as a duty. A duty to the resistance he honored and wrote about with modesty, discretion, and admiration. A duty towards the Epirot mother who raised her children with difficulty and fatigue. A duty towards a vanishing culture. His images do not fall into a folkloristic sentimentalism or an aesthetic beautification but control the emotion built as they are with instinct and intelligence to retain the photographic interest of the viewer betraying along with the duty the joy this good photographer feels every time he lifts his camera.
Born into an urban Athenian family and with studies in painting, Voula Papaioannou began engaging with photography just before the war. The hardships of the occupation were her first theme while after the liberation she was occupied with efforts for the country's recovery and also the recording of the new urban landscape being born. Papaioannou's photos, though documents of an era of misery and pain, are permeated with joy and optimism. They avoid falling into the trap of the dramatic. They manage to juxtapose this misery with the spark of its overturn, which is hope. But the most important thing in Papaioannou's photographic work is her compositions which surprise with their originality and unity of style, virtues rare if one considers the artistic isolation of Greek photographers of the time.
AP: Do modern Greek photographers in the artistic field, especially, receive influences and impacts from great foreign photographers? Are there trends? Schools?
PR: The problem in Greece was a problem of education and knowledge. Not only photographic. I can say that photography started somewhat with people who played more with their cameras, but perhaps consciously the Athens Photographic Center...
AP: When was it created?
PR: Late '70s if I'm not mistaken. By some young people who had been abroad, who had some contact and who engaged with photography professionally and most of them continue today to have a photographic work of value. I will mention the names of Kostis Antoniadis, Giorgos Depolas, Nikos Panayotopoulos, Stefanos Paschos, Yiannis Dimos who today directs the Photographic Center of Skopelos, and newer generations that came out of them, either friends or students like Nikos Markou, Eleni Maligoura, Natasa Markidou and obviously I forget many others. But I want to say that indeed the Athens Photographic Center offered and was the first to have a touching presence in this artistic field. Isolated cases continued to exist afterwards. Until then, however, we were talking about hobbyist photography around the cameras or around the beautiful Greek nature and so on. I want to emphasize that the great names I touched on earlier, Balafas, Papaioannou, and others I said they didn't have awareness of what they were doing. That is, they had artistic awareness but for them, the rendering of the subject was of greater importance. That is, Kostas Balafas has a devotion to a vanishing Greece and with respect and reverence captures it. For him, the quality of his image is of secondary importance. It reminds a bit of Eugene Smith in relation to the justice we talked about in another broadcast.
AP: Your own movement, the Fotochoros and the photographic circle?
PR: Both these movements, Fotochoros was and is an exhibition space and the photographic circle is a photographers' association, started in the '80s. As exhibition spaces, there was already one in Thessaloniki and the Athens Photographic Center on Sina Street. Fotochoros started later on Tsakalof Street in the '80s. From the '80s onwards, these photographic forces and different styles and styles in photography began to develop. We finally had the luxury of being in touch with the outside world, with books, with exhibitions. Books developed a lot in this decade and spread, through which we got to know what was happening abroad.
Kostis Antoniadis, a co-founder of the Athens Photographic Center in the late '70s, significantly helped the progress of new Greek photography not only with his photographic work but also with his educational and theoretical contribution. Although a professional photographer in the field of advertising, he did not fail to cultivate his personal, artistic photographic work that quickly covered a wide range from simple recording to visual and digital interventions. Antoniadis' work is characterized by emotional restraint, aesthetic pursuit and seems to explore more the limits of the medium than those of the photographer.
Photographers are rarely born with the immediacy of Andreas Schoinas. Immediacy that refers to his relationship both with the photographic medium and with the subjects he photographs. For Schoinas, the world consists of his personal surroundings. Only that this environment constitutes a vast courtyard of wonders where unhappiness is covered by the eyes full of humor and tenderness of the photographer.
Even his professional photo shoots during weddings and gatherings become opportunities to discreetly infiltrate the backstage and confidently set up his own scene. Andreas Schoinas deceives us by giving us the impression that he is simply photographing his everyday life while in reality, he is building it himself.
AP: Which of the photographers you mentioned have engaged with various types of photography? For example, was there photojournalism in Greece?
PR: There was, but it was classic news reporting, like the Megaloikonomou agency, which captured figures such as Venizelos, Papandreou, Karamanlis, and other events. With quality, interest, and very useful information. The journalism that touches what we call artistic work begins again these days. The most well-known name in this field is Nikos Economopoulos, who joined the Magnum agency in the '90s, who now moves in the areas where other international photojournalists are. His first work was, however, a parallel photography of Greek and Turkish spaces. Where almost the people seem to be one and the same. You couldn't recognize a difference.
AP: Today, does photographic production play a role outside of Athens in other cities, say in Thessaloniki or provincial cities?
PR: Photography in Thessaloniki has been quite prominent. In reality, with work that has promoted not necessarily the photography of the city but generally photography, was a series of exhibitions that take place every February, under the responsibility of Aris Georgiou, an architect and photographer, and which was named photographic coincidence. I must also emphasize the very good work done by the General Secretariat of Popular Education, specifically by a person in charge of the photography department, Vasilis Spiliopoulos, who for years has organized departments in Greece for people involved in artistic photography. For the provinces, this is particularly important not because it will produce professional photographers who will also remain unemployed within the small and limited space that can absorb them but because it produces people who express themselves. And some with great quality.
AP: Has the diaspora of artists in Europe or America played a very significant role? The role of a lever often to bring forward new things and to progress. Did the same thing happen with the diaspora of photographers in Europe or America who may have returned to Greece?
PR: I am not aware of significant names of Greek photographers abroad. On the contrary, I know of young photographers from Greece who went abroad to study photography. And I believe they will return and flourish photographically in Greece.
Panos Kokkinias, one of the founding members of the photographic circle along with Andreas Schoinas and many others, belongs to the new generation of photographers who decided to be formally educated in photography. He himself reached as far as a postgraduate degree at Yale University in America. His photography work followed the trajectory of his studies, starting with the nervous and often humorous black-and-white photos, a tribute to his inspirer Gary Winogrand, to reach today through color and large-format machines in collections of images that constitute autonomous aesthetic events, sometimes touching the limits of the conceptual.