Ta Nea (2018)
In the album of your life that you're showing me, I see many pictures with your nanny.
She's a woman I adored and still adore because fortunately, she's still alive. My wife often tells me, "don't say these things because they will misunderstand you." But that's how I am. This is what I can say I have achieved. I say what I want and what I believe, and I'm not concerned with other people's interpretations.
How did you achieve that?
Because it bothered me a lot what others said. I wanted to be loved, to have nice things said about me. To be a good kid. I realized when I was older - after 25 - that it's a huge burden. Now, I have distanced myself from that particular concern.
Did you discover its root?
It's from my mother. When you're constantly told "well done," you develop a mentality that you have to live up to expectations. To actually be good, to be the first in class, to excel, so that they continue to love you. It definitely gave me a push. And what I've realized - even though I don't have children - is what a parent, especially nowadays when you can't give specific advice because times change every five years, should do, is to tell their child every day when they wake up "I love you and well done." Most people suffer from a lack of recognition at home. I had it to an excessive degree. But the minor flaw in this case is that everyone loves you. So, I made an effort with myself not to care about others' opinions, as long as what I do is in line with myself. I grew up comfortably, but without extravagance.
Growing up with a nanny in the '50s doesn't it indicate more than just comfort?
What doesn't exist today is the concept of the middle class. My family's origin on my father's side is from Corfu-Italy. My mother's family is from the Bavarians. That's why I'm Catholic on both sides. So, we have a dose of foreign education and tradition. We spoke many languages at home. My father spoke seven languages, had gone to an Italian school, and my mother to a French one. Our home was 100 square meters and four people lived there with a maid and a nanny. A low-ranking employee has this kind of house today. Nevertheless, we lived a comfortable life. Just like I do now. If someone sees me, they would say I make money. I have simply learned - wrongly on one hand, rightly on the other - to enjoy life with what I have. So, my father, in difficult times like the Occupation, sold a lot not to miss the train of life and to help his friends. With excessive optimism, instead of chasing to get the money back, he said, "it doesn't matter, we will make it." But he didn't make it.
Did the financial collapse cost you?
Not at all. Our house was always full of joy, music, and play. When I was 15, my father went bankrupt. I remember bailiffs entering the house and taking the furniture, the piano, the records. It didn't hurt me. I'm convinced that a misfortune brings another good.
What good did your father's bankruptcy bring?
If I had continued to grow up with the comfort I had, I might have become a spoiled brat. Adding the great protection I had, all the elements were there for me to become one. But the setback I experienced at an age when I was young and ambitious and optimistic did me good. I immediately started giving French lessons to earn my allowance. The tools my parents gave me were wealth. When they tell me, "aren't you sad that your father didn't leave you a fortune?," I reply that he left me so many tools. And looking back at the life we lived, there lies the answer to why I have succeeded as a photography teacher. I do the same thing, just on a different scale. Just as I loved my father for the atmosphere he created at home, I continue to do the same.
Like you're directing your life
Unintentionally, yes, I do. The director worries about how to end his movie. And me, from a distance, I'm curious to see how this life will end. So far, it's going well.
Law, Paris, Political Sciences, returning to Greece, practicing law, and suddenly, photography.
I was doing something I didn't like, so I couldn't be as good as I was. A job you do just for a living is not enjoyable. If I were a millionaire, I wouldn't have become a lawyer, but I would definitely choose photography. That's why when they ask me in admiration how I went from being a lawyer to a photographer, I reply that I was simply spoiled. I was used to do what I wanted.
How did you know you had talent?
I didn't know it nor does it concern me. Talent is nonsense. I have countless students with talent who did nothing. If you don't do what you choose in life with joy, you have little chance of success. Talent - which comes to us without suffering for it - can be a brake on joy because you want to live up to it, while you should respond to the desire for the joy you have. What has helped me is that I have many different abilities. I'm not just methodical or smart - as much as I am. I have many different things and desires accumulated.
The first photograph you took?
In New York, the skyscrapers.
Was that the moment you decided to leave law and become a photographer?
It never happens with a click from one day to the next. Just as I've never fallen in love at first sight. It needs to get under my skin. The same happened with photography. My love for art had gotten under my skin. It makes me think that things are not only what is visible. That there's something beyond what we feel and see. And it has nothing to do with intelligence, with the mind alone, as science does. The two things with which you can understand art - regardless of how much you believe in them - are religion and love. Two inexplicable things, but whoever engages with them carries inside them a truth they cannot express. When do love, art, and religion stop? When the mystery is lost. Our life gains meaning when we give it a poetic dimension. And these anxieties were inside me from childhood because I lived in a house full of art. I grew up with classical music; my mother was a musician, played the piano, and my father had many records.
The catalytic role of your father.
Clearly. He was a very good person whom everyone loved, but the strongest character was my mother. I lived through my father's gradual decline. I saw that due to his health and his financial weakness, he had lost his prestige, his glory. When he died, I found this invaluable material. The letters he wrote to his father - who was blind - from Rome where he lived. I discovered a person who, apart from kindness, had exceptional depth and quality. He wasn't made to be a merchant and to turn over money. They would hold meetings at the company and talk about the poetry of Solomos. My father's death liberated me. I said, I don't want to end up like him, who trapped his life in something that didn't express him. I'm sad he didn't see me as a photographer because he would have been very happy. Unfortunately, I have only one photograph I took of him.