I told him I envy the way he analyzes photographs and asked him to sign the new edition of his book "Introduction to Artistic Photography". After all, that was the reason for the interview. "This book was successful because the language is oral," he says. "I transcribed everything I said at the seminar I conducted in Cyprus," he explained. "I never felt that I was born a writer. I simply felt the obligation to write down what I advocate about photography. Because that's how history is written, that's how ideas are circulated," he said as he prepared to sit down. "I often wondered, what happens if I change my mind over time about something I've written. Eventually, I say it doesn't matter at all. Some of my views have been revised, but that's natural and shouldn't scare us," he said, piquing my already keen curiosity.
We met at his "headquarters," at the "Photographic Circle". I had in front of me the man who has been loved and fought like no other in our photographic space. A huge challenge. I wanted him to tell me everything. And to convey everything to you. Therefore, I limit the introduction for the sake of the interview. Platon Rivellis has just returned from selecting photographs for this year's Biennale, and the discussion begins:
Did you see any good work among the candidates for the 2001 Youth Biennale?
The average quality of the photographic works was desperately poor. Much below the average of Greek photography. To the point where I don't know if we should promote this work externally. For some reason, people snub these exhibitions. So, we probably need to find ways to upgrade the organization.
Have you ever participated in a photography contest?
No, I started photography late in life.
Your words, Mr. Rivellis, have occasionally sparked a storm of reactions from professionals or visual photographers, etc. What do you think this is due to?
First of all, it may be due to my character. I don't know to what extent it was my manner that triggered these indeed harsh reactions. But let's start from the beginning. Firstly, these reactions were fueled a lot by magazines, which are tempted by "controversies" to increase readers' interest. Secondly, art and religion are the two areas that create stark contrasts, because there are no evidential elements for the argumentation of one side or the other. However, within the art space itself, Photography is even more contradictory, on one hand because it is very new, hence it does not have a past to rely on, and on the other hand because it has many applications outside its artistic space. For example, the fact that professionals saw me as a threat (wrongly of course) is because they consider their work artistic. However, I respect it absolutely - I emphasize this - and I know that I cannot do it with the same quality. I respect it absolutely to the same extent that I respect the work of an excellent carpenter. Another reason is that the world of artistic photography comes from two directions: there are professional photographers and theorists (semioticians and others) who talk outside of photography. I developed a discourse that did not fight the other two but was positioned somewhere in the middle. Finally, there was no developed theoretical discourse about photography in Greece, and it was natural, starting out, to create tension. Ultimately, I believe that some tensions are due to misunderstandings, while others should be simply treated as different positions. They should not be seen as conflicting but as parallel views that promote fruitful reflection.
If you were entering the field today, would you have a different attitude?
If I were entering the field today, I would be older both biologically and photographically. So, I wouldn't have the same passion. I might apply some tactics in my approach. Difficult since I never had a tactic. Whenever my opinion is sought in an exhibition, I always say what I believe. Most people don't do this, resulting in me becoming unpopular and others liked. But ultimately, it has been to my advantage because when someone talks to me, they know I am sincere, that I do not have a conventional stance. Notice something: I don't claim that my opinion is correct. I claim that I believe in it. When one supports an opinion, it doesn't mean they will never change it or that it's infallible. But when expressing it, they base it on certain arguments and criteria. This in art must be understood and not taken as hatred or antipathy.
So, you would say today that a commercial photograph is not necessarily non-artistic?
I would say that primarily a commercial photograph is not artistic, but it can be an exception. When I talk about photography, I rely on certain arguments drawn from two sources (and I can't find a third). First, from general principles of behavior and life outside of art , such as my now established view that simplicity leads to great composition. Speaking in mathematical terms, between two solutions, the correct (and more beautiful) one is the simpler. This is something I've seen applied in life and believe it applies to art as well. The second source is all of the previous art. The lessons from the greats of every form of art are applied, with necessary adjustments, to photography. So, my criteria are not arbitrary. They are certainly much less subjective compared to those of a random photography critic. Of course, as in everything in life (except perhaps in science), our personality infiltrates. But by no means is it a matter of taste, "what Rivellis likes or dislikes".
If you hadn't been involved with other arts, would your criteria be different? Purely photographic?
As a person grows, they nourish their mind and knowledge with material from various areas. Not only from their art or only from Art in general. This load forms the criteria with which we approach photography. It is, of course, much more comforting to deal with photography in technical terms, that is, sociological, semiotic, psychoanalytic. It's relatively easier and tangible. I have not adopted this method because I find the other more interesting. Not that all this does not have some basis, but in art, I am interested in the abstract aspect. Let's also move to another part, the so-called artistic photography. If by artistic we mean photography in which the photographic medium is used exactly like the brush or any tool used by the painter in the broad sense, I do not feel in a position to judge. However, if we talk about a photograph that remains a photograph but has an artistic character, then I can judge. However, in our times, we face a strange hybrid. A photograph that wants to reap the projection and the money of galleries and at the same time remain in the immunity of photography that is approached with other criteria and not with the weight of the centuries of painting.
Why, however, should we necessarily attribute bad intentions to the latter and not accept that it may simply be about a disposition of freedom in expression?
Obviously, everyone is free to do what they want. Sometimes we say that a work is bad because that's as far as the "talent" of the artist could lead it. However, sometimes we say it's bad because it hides a dishonesty of intentions, which may be due to naivety or cunning of the creator. You might ask, who am I to understand this. I don't know. I just often sense it. Usually, these works have an easy approach to the public and more easily turn into valuable commodities. But this is not something that can be generalized. You see it case by case.
Do ethical criteria therefore fit in art?
But ethics here is not introduced because the artist might be a "bad" person. It's introduced because ethics ends up in aesthetics. That is, an innocent young artist at most can make an indifferent work. They cannot do harm. To do harm, there must be a distortion of creative desire. This carries an ethic. I am not here to judge the ethical worthlessness but the aesthetic foolishness it ends up in. The harm starts when the artist strays from their inner truth and begins to shift their interest outward, to the showcase, to the audience, to their extracurricular intention. There they will betray themselves.
Despite your insistence that essence lies in the inner truth and not in projection (perhaps precisely because of that now that I think about it) some have labeled you the "guru of Kolonaki."
Bringing these accusations to the fore, even to give me the opportunity to respond, I fear we are turning our discussion into a populist and less substantial one. However, I will respond: I have the misfortune of the "Photographic Circle" being in Kolonaki. I would perhaps prefer it to be somewhere else. But here is where my law office used to be. Most people who come are from the middle and lower social classes. The percentage of very wealthy is minimal. Moreover, the PC is not rich and receives the least subsidies than any other photographic space. As for the "guru" label, if they mean someone who influences his students, then yes, obviously I do. What kind of teacher would I be if I didn't pass on what I have promised to teach? It seems clear, though, I think, that I don't exercise any other kind of influence (e.g., of a religious nature), nor am I in a position to ensure them projection. After all, many good and well-known photographers have passed through the PC (and I am proud of that), who ultimately renounced me saying: "Rivellis taught me well, but now I'm not interested in what he says." So, why the "guru" blame?
Perhaps because your judgments were perceived by some as dogmatic.
But refusing to level photography is not dogmatism. If I put all photographers on the same level, then I would not be honoring those I appreciate. It would be like attributing the same values to Fellini and a TV director.
Let's go back a bit, from where your photographic journey began.
I started in 1977. Until then, I was photographing as an amateur. Within a span of four years, while practicing law, photography had taken up so much of my time that law automatically got pushed aside. However, I didn't know if I could live by teaching, so I opened a store, "Fotohoros," which was successful in terms of appreciation and audience turnout but nonexistent in terms of profits, due to my personal ignorance. Meanwhile, my teaching activity began to go well. I taught at schools, universities, and elsewhere. the store and focused on teaching. I must say that it always saddened me that I lost contact with my students after the seminars ended. I always create an emotional state with them. Maybe that's why my critics use the word "guru".
Can it be done differently?
In recent years, I've tried and to some extent succeeded in detaching the teacher-student relationship and allowing it to develop after the seminar ends. However, due to this emotional involvement of mine, the Photographic Circle (PC) association was established. I wanted to attract new photographers but also to maintain my contact with those who had completed the seminar. Today, the latter make up 90% of the PC, which must be noted, is open to all ages and believes in lifelong learning. Here, one can continually learn through seminars and lectures, read books, print in good conditions, exhibit, and publish. Everything that interests a person who does photography.
The objection is heard that you too fell into the trap of many exhibitions and publications. A trap that entails the risk of misleading the public and the students.
The public is educated through many exhibitions. As long as they are decent works that do not offend, that are not pretentious and gimmicky. If they do not offend and the only thing you can accuse them of is their blandness, they do not bother me. It's a bit excessive to demand the exhibition of only high-quality works. After all, the problem of our time is not the mediocre, it's the clever-clever artists. Who am I to stop artists who want to exhibit? On the contrary, I believe that by exhibiting, one gets rid of the ghosts of their photographs, sees them on the wall, gets judged. I want to emphasize that the photographs exhibited at the PC are not my choices. Those who decide to exhibit take the responsibility. However, in the final analysis, the fact that mediocre exhibitions are held and mediocre books are published, I believe, enlivens the dialogue to the benefit of photography.
When did America enter your path?
A year or two after I started teaching, in 1983. I decided to leave for a few months and study in a country active in photography. That was the definitive motivation to leave the legal profession. Returning, I closed what had remained of my office and devoted myself to photography and subsequently to the PC, which has already closed twelve years and has more than 250 steady members. The fact that I still need the warmth of the PC is true. The question is whether the other members need it too. I believe or hope they do. Because the PC is a continuous and stable communication aimed at the continuous improvement of each of us.
Yet there is also your personal photographic journey.
Which is comparatively insignificant. I don't know if I'm an insignificant photographer. I'm not feigning humility. I simply did not give myself the chance to invest all the time and interest needed to see how valuable or not I am. I publish my personal work because I would be inconsistent if I limited myself to teaching from on high without exposing myself. However, if you asked me in what order I place my activities, I would answer that I primarily want to teach, then to photograph, and then to write books.
Do you identify any milestones in your photographic journey?
If I'm not mistaken, you started with dance photography. I would call those "applied" photographs. Few of them, like the theater photographs I took, survive—in my opinion—as independent photographs.
What role did Winogrand play in your journey?
It was a face that impressed and marked me greatly. I was saddened that we couldn't, due to his premature death, continue the relationship we developed in America. It's interesting that we didn't resemble each other either as people or as photographers.
Konstantinos Manos?
He is a very good and generous person. When I went to America, he helped me without knowing me, and we became friends. We didn't have time with Winogrand. I haven't met many. But when I get to know someone, I get to know them well. The same with Plossu.
I have heard many photographers suggest the FK seminars for gaining knowledge about photography, questioning the necessity of the years of study that schools offer.
Let's clarify things. First of all, FK is not a school. I'm just teaching an introductory course in artistic photography. The technique I teach is the bare minimum necessary for creation. The rest, whoever wants, will find on their own. And my advanced classes are on artistic photography. Whether schools are useful or not will be proven by the professional field, a field in which I am useless.
Do you really believe that you are useless, for example, to someone who does advertising photography?
Without a trace of modesty, I believe that I am -humanly- useful to them and -photographically- useless. I am proud that many attend the seminars having previously attended Greek or foreign schools and that others, after the seminars, attend Greek or foreign schools. Therefore, FK seminars and schools are not comparable. If my goal was to help some in their professional path, I would be teaching public relations and shortcuts. On the contrary, by setting difficulties, I make someone's path in the lifestyle reality harder. Professionally, what I teach is not useful, and I make that clear from the beginning. Now, if I am proud of anything, it is that I helped, and this is acknowledged even by those who have attacked me over time, to create a community of artistic photography in Greece. Photographers who are now common knowledge and were unknown at the time were also promoted in FK. I think that a good job was done in this direction through my lessons to educators across Greece. Some accused me then of speaking pompously and about "heavy" artistic subjects to a broad audience that had no relation to them. However, I believe that something remained with most of them.
Was this a good experience for you?
Very good. Then I felt for the first time that Public Administration in Greece was working. And because the seminars were open, I had the chance to speak to farmers. Each of them may perceive the artistic event differently, but the essence is that when you give it to them simply, they respond.
Another characteristic of yours is that you speak making continuous references to other arts.
Yes. I want to convey the message that whatever I have learned, I have learned from elsewhere. So, everyone should open up. Photographic groups in the provinces call me to talk about cinema and other artistic subjects.
Do you consider your series of television shows on artistic photography successful today?
With the shows, I wanted to achieve the same as with my books. To bring a broader audience into contact with good photography that it usually does not see and which is more difficult. From what it seems, they worked. And they were played many times. And won over people who did not know photography.
Is it true that you wanted to become a filmmaker?
True. I loved and still love cinema very much. In my youth, I was with Pantelis Voulgaris. However, directing requires a lot of money. In photography, you create with nothing.
FK has also been traveling to Syros lately. Why?
All theoretical lessons somehow remain in the air and are a bit problematic for creative freedom if they do not take the form of intensive and thoughtless photography from everyday life. Being members of FK all day together, previously in Paros and now in Syros, working, discussing, photographing, watching movies, helps us to produce better work. Syros is very beautiful and offers many photographic opportunities. I set up a fully equipped space on the island (including a darkroom) and large enough for screenings, discussions, events. This would not have succeeded if I did not make a home on the island so as not to see the place as a tourist. So, I decided to split myself between Athens and Syros. All this effort is based on the concept of lifelong learning, which we embrace and promote in FK. This is the meaning of both my advanced seminars and those of other invited guests, which concern other arts as well. They give us a liveliness of spirit hoping our photos will become more complex, more interesting. From this year, therefore, there will be a series of seminars in which both Greeks and foreigners will teach, and not only about photography. These can be attended either for a weekend or for one or at most two weeks.
Have you ever been subsidized for your activities?
I have received two grants, from the Kostopoulos Foundation and the Ministry of Culture and Sports. Of course, I never believed that an artist or a society should rely on government support. You must stand on your own feet, and government support should assist you. If it sustains you, you become its prisoner. You disappear when you lose it.
How do our state-supported photographic works seem to you?
They could not be better or worse than the rest. We couldn't have a great photographic world and the stock market, health, education to be as they are. That money goes into art is pleasant. That it goes in wrong directions is obvious. You can't impose better photography by law. So what remains for us is for each in their field to cultivate their criteria and to insist on a level of demands.
To whom does the entrance of photography into Fine Arts ultimately benefit?
I never considered that the goal of photography is to establish itself through the School of Fine Arts. It's good to be represented there, as in other educational institutions. I do not marry photography with Fine Arts, and this is known. However, photographic education is certainly a good tool for ASFA students.
Do you believe in our photographic institutions?
I believe not in institutions but in individuals. No one today can imagine proposing the dissolution of the Art Theatre, but at the same time, we all know that its prime was under Karolos Koun. In our photographic affairs, what we have experienced to date is either schools or the organization of exhibitions (PCA, Photosynergy, Month of Photography), behind which are specific people, without whom all this would not have happened.
Nevertheless, there was a specific proposal for a national policy for photography.
I was opposed to many points of it. In the end, of course, nothing happened. But God forbid, is it possible for art to advance through Ministries? I don't understand why the Ministry of Culture should intervene in an institutional way. Its role should be limited to helping people produce work. I disagree with state-fed institutions. Whether photography in Greece will do well or not does not depend on the Ministry's strategy. If I am a fool, I will produce foolish work. In the end, it's not a matter of institutions, nor Museums. It's a matter of education that goes continuously from the bottom up. Even in Museums, they have now realized that their most essential role is educational and especially lifelong learning.
I found myself a few days ago at Photosynergy. What struck me was that to approach the majority of exhibitions, let alone to be moved, one would have to refer to texts explaining the creator's additions. Are we moving towards purely cerebral photography?
I did not see the specific exhibitions and cannot judge. But what you're addressing is, in my opinion, the main problem of today's art. Mainly of photography, since it is the medium of our time. Perhaps it stems from the need for two combined monsters of modern life, which are advertising and the media. These two areas dominate our lives and indulge in the oversimplification characteristic of labels and captions. Most times when we face a contemporary work of art, we see the intention and title first, and then the work. The work acts as an illustration. Most times, this illustration is simplistic and not complex, as an art piece should interest. This means that since most artists today come from schools, being products of teacher education, the production chain of these, in my view, aberrations multiplies. The teacher teaches them, and the students apply them zealously, knowing they can become famous and possibly sell. Thus, the abstract power of artistic expression has been lost and replaced by a directed and usually oversimplified sloganism.
Have you ever felt that you wronged someone who came to show you their work?
I am not a talent scout. I do not prejudge anyone's future. I judge what they show me at that moment. It has happened that a photographer showed me bad work who later became good. But one becomes good when, at the right moment, you clip their wings. Besides, I consider those seeking strict criticism smart.
Have you never gotten tired of the continuous and passionate involvement with photography over the years?
No. I get life from my contact with people. The job I do would be unbearable if I couldn't stand them. Besides, the start I make with Syros proves it. As for photography, it is a means for me to be in touch with the entire abstract part of art. It is the springboard that creates a very interesting communication with people.
Do you think about the continuation of the PCA after you?
Of course, I think about it. Maybe I'll create a foundation. But, anyway, to function, someone with the same needs and anxiety as me must be found. A sad observation I have made is that the new generation is not very interested in collective engagement. Along the way, I have found people who have shown me love and devotion. But it's hard to find someone who is willing to sacrifice their personal work for the sake of the collective. However, I don't believe that a possible end of FK after my death would mean that all its activity was nonsense. Just as I'm not saddened by the fact that my family name ends with me, since I don't have children. I would, of course, be happy if someday someone read one of my books and said, "This guy had something good to say last century."
We've reached the other great love of Platon Rivellis, books. You have the largest photographic library in Greece.
Yes, I love books very much. I try to convince even bad photographers to make books. There are millions of exhibitions that are forgotten. Books remain. Now is the opportunity to explain that I generally don't go to exhibitions, and I don't do this out of snobbery. Exhibitions don't impress me. On the contrary, I have bought all the books, Greek and foreign, that are published, which photographers rarely gift me.
Do you consider it essential for a photographer to delve into the work of their predecessors and contemporaries as a component of photographic creation?
Absolutely. It's inconceivable for this not to happen. What does the creator do? They project a world of their own using elements of the external world. They do this by using the language of their art, their medium. So, along with the effort to externalize, a proposal is formulated that fits into the history of the medium. Thus, when you do photography, you're not alone. You're in a line of 150 years of photography and another 5,000 years of art. So, your proposal is not out of place. Even to overthrow rules or limits, you need to know them. There's a tendency these days to erase the past. That's not possible. Our present is our past.
Do you remember who was the first photographer that inspired you to get involved in photography?
I think the first one who caught my eye and convinced me that he was doing something special was Kertesz.
From the history of Greek photography, which figure stands out to you?
Voula Papaioannou. I've seen all her work and believe she is a complete creator. There are many other names, but I think she is outstanding and will be appreciated in fullness over time.
Are you satisfied with today's Greek photography?
I am. And I can say that there are very good photographers who are still unknown. I can make this assessment because people outside of FK come to show me their work. What is missing from young talented people is persistence and continuity in photographic production. Because photography is relatively easy, talented creators do not persist in production as much as others with fewer skills and more ambition.