Tell us about your studies. What did you gain from them?
From my legal studies, not much. Maybe I learned to organize my mind and my arguments better. However, contrary to what most people think, legal studies offer very specialized knowledge, not general-use knowledge. From my brief and occasional involvement with political science, I gained my liberation from it. The few months I spent in America attending photography seminars demystified some famous photographers for me, but I had the great fortune to get to know Garry Winogrand, who is very important to me, quite well. However, the real studies are those that each person undertakes on their own. And they do well when they realize the great joy this personal educational adventure can offer. I owe a lot to my parents who contributed to my growing up in a home where literature, music, and intellectual discussions were always present. From there, it was relatively obvious that I should try to make the rest of my life filled with these intellectual joys. What I have learned so far is due to people I admired, whose thoughts I listened to or read with respect, as well as my contact with works of art that filled me with joy.
You have taught and still teach. What is your main conclusion from this involvement?
In 1980, I started teaching some friends of mine in my law office what I was learning about photography technically and otherwise. I needed this to consolidate what I was learning by reading. I quickly realized that this unprecedented, perhaps primitive, teaching experience brought me great joy. I also realized that I had a knack, perhaps even a talent, for it, and the next year in a small studio I had rented, I began teaching a group of my acquaintances, as well as a group of foreigners on behalf of a branch of an American university. These experiences made me realize that I had to quit practicing law because otherwise, I would betray both my clients and my students, and that I needed to expand my photographic library since it was the main source of my knowledge and teaching. My transition to America for a few months answered my need to meet other, better photographers than myself and to celebrate my transition from law to photography. Of course, I had no illusion that a few months of seminars would make me wiser. Very quickly, my teaching activity snowballed. From 1984 to 1990, I taught simultaneously or successively - apart from my own private seminars - at the University of La Verne, at Moraitis School, at Athens College (in high school and adult sections), at the American Base in Nea Makri, at Panteion University (Department of Mass Media), at Focus Photography School, while also traversing Greece delivering seminars on behalf of the Ministry of Culture to photographer-trainers of Popular Education. However, I realized that I risked corrupting the great joy I felt as a teacher, first because of the plethora of goals and secondly because it was very important for me to be chosen by my students and not to impose myself on them from above. And this only happened in my own photography department. Therefore, I decided henceforth to devote myself exclusively to it. The main seminar I have been delivering continuously from 1982 until today is titled "Introduction to Artistic Photography" and includes technical teaching (less than one-third of the total time) and artistic teaching, namely the history and aesthetics of photography, as well as critique of the participants' work. This seminar lasts all winter from November to June and is held at the Benaki Museum in Kolonaki. A second, so-called advanced, seminar takes place in the first ten days of July in Syros (my place of residence since 2000), focusing on daily photography and critique. A third seminar follows (both in Syros and Athens) aiming at the critique, organization, and presentation of a photographer's entire body of work (Portfolio). My only other teaching activity is a few four-day (Friday to Monday) intensive seminars that I deliver in provincial cities of Greece, as well as in Cyprus, when local bodies invite me.
My seminars are attended by people of all ages and every educational or photographic level. This is extremely important because it fosters very fertile discussions. The fact that the seminars do not aim at professional rehabilitation or the creation of an artistic career (even if these words sound uncomfortably odd) ensures that the common link connecting the students is simply a love and curiosity for the art of photography and the desire of all to improve without any other tangible benefit.
After so many years of teaching, I am convinced that miracles happen with the right teaching. I have also realized that talent is secondary and that in any case, it is not something controllable. Mostly, however, I have found that interest, knowledge, and method to a large extent can be cultivated and that in combination with passion and intelligence, they can yield more results than talent when it is uncertain. With the courses, I helped, I believe, many young photographers in Greece to utilize their value and quality. I clarify that by "helped" I mean artistically and educationally, not in terms of promotion, which is not my area. At the same time, however, I believe that I have significantly contributed to creating a photographically cultivated audience that did not exist in Greece before.
Tell us about your personal photographic work.
Before becoming a photography teacher, I started taking photos, captivated by the work of great photographers I gradually discovered. Only now, I feel that my activity as a photographer has taken a back seat, since not only do I consider my teaching work more important, but it also occupies and engages my thoughts more. I continue to photograph both out of joy and because it renews my contemplation about photography. I find it difficult and, moreover, pointless to specify my influences. I am well aware of the history of photography and admire so many photographers that I no longer know who has influenced me the most. But I am equally influenced by the artists I love, who are directors, choreographers, painters. The burden of influences each of us carries is complex and enriches over the years, while in a strange way it also becomes clearer. Perhaps because over the years we challenge our influences according to our own judgment. I am not led by a specific photographic concern. Nor by any ideology. Metaphysical and emotional issues affect my life and my art more than anything else. My aesthetic propositions are attempts to reconcile what I see with what I feel and believe. My photographs, those I take and those I support, abhor messages and illustrated concepts. I believe in abstraction and hope for transcendence. But I pursue nothing. Photography has the gift of its poverty. It is an intangible image that is reproduced limitlessly and identically in many different ways and means. This is what I attempt to emphasize and proclaim. I try to avoid anything that would make it seem more valuable than it is.
How is photography affected by the art market?
The juxtaposition of the words art market and art surprises and repels me. A photograph can be sold very expensively because it belonged to someone famous or because its creator has long been dead. Rightly, perhaps, it is sold and rightly bought. This does not make it more important than others and in any case, this process cannot concern people who are involved in art. I understand that it concerns those involved in the stock market.
Is there artistic photography, and if so, why?
The right to consider photography art has been secured by creative photographers who, from the time of Julia Margaret Cameron to today, have used it in ingenious and very personal ways as an artistic language. Once someone realizes this - and I am sorry but very few in the arts have realized it - there is no question, and there is neither why nor because.
What is your relationship with cinema?
I had a closer relationship with cinema than with photography since childhood. I was a regular patron of both film clubs that existed in Athens. During the intensive summer seminars, I showed my students - among many documentaries on various arts - some difficult and very important films. Then I realized that without help, almost no one understood them. Gradually, I started to write notes to explain them. The notes became two large books (I am now writing the third) and I began to organize small seminars on directors I know and love. The difference in my involvement with cinema compared to photography is first, that the cinema courses are -mostly- for my photography students (and their friends), and second, that I do not attempt to teach anyone to make cinema (since it is something I ignore), but only to watch cinema (at least as I see it) and thirdly, I do not waste my time talking about directors I do not love, something I do with photographers I do not love for the sake of completeness of my photography courses.
You engage in writing. Please mention the most significant books you have written.
Besides my books on cinema, I started writing books to assist students in my photography courses. The first one was named "Photography" and includes all the necessary technical advice. It would have been more appropriately named Photography Manual, but I was warned that few would understand the title. The latest edition of this book includes a section written by my colleague and former student Manos Lykakis on digital technology, which I am not yet very proficient in. Following was a book commissioned by the General Secretariat of Popular Education titled "Monologue on Photography." You see, I believe that there is not much room for dialogue in art. If someone perceives things differently, there are no irrefutable arguments, logical or otherwise, to convince them. They will see the world and life differently. Then I wrote another theoretical book titled "Thoughts on Photography" with the subtitle "A Personal Reading of Its History." This book includes about a hundred photographs by famous photographers with some of my free comments. Meanwhile, I also wrote various articles and texts published in newspapers and magazines, which I published in a book titled "Texts on Photography." After a seminar of mine in Nicosia, I published the transcription of those twenty instructional hours in a book titled "Introduction to Artistic Photography." This book also publishes many of the photographs I refer to. Feeling obliged, as I teach and encourage my students to publish and exhibit their photos, I did the same to avoid hypocrisy. After participating in two small publication series of the Circle (my photo albums were titled "Light and Silence" and "Ruins"), I published a large album titled "Full Stop" with many of my photographs from different periods of my work. Finally, I published a book titled "50 Photographs 50 Texts," which includes 50 of my texts on photography published in recent years in the press and 50 panoramic photographs of mine.
What are your future plans?
I hope to continue doing what I do today since it brings me joy. That is, to teach at the Benaki Museum on Wednesdays, to present photographers at the Benaki Museum on Thursdays, to conduct my intensive seminar in Syros, at my home, where I have created a wonderful seminar space, to organize exhibitions on behalf of various institutions with works by famous photographers, to complete my third book on cinema, to continue delivering the series of lectures at the Hellenic American Union on photography and cinema every October, and to be able to make a TV series of shows about photography and cinema again, as I have done in the past. You see, the power of television as an educational medium exceeds everything else. And if, amidst all these activities, I find the time to photograph as I want and need to do, my joy will be even greater.
How do you view the current photographic reality in Greece and abroad?
Photography, both in Greece and abroad, is fashionable. This scares me. It scares me that it is used because it is the ideal tool for conceptualism, advertising, propaganda, any possible ease related to its production and promotion. Photography is difficult because it is easy, poor, and simple. But for all these reasons, it is also vulnerable. The photographs promoted by the media are those of the art stock markets - which you mentioned - and the applied photographs that flood the print media. The plethora and misuse of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees worldwide will not improve the situation. We will simply have many bad artists with degrees. However, good photographers exist and will continue to exist. They may have a harder time becoming known if they don't play the dominant game. But that's okay. Digital technology will also temporarily confuse the issue with its verbosity, but ultimately, it will help because it will bring back the charming poverty of photography, which does not tolerate uniqueness, large prints, and numbered copies.
What is the role of the creator?
The question would have been inappropriate a few years ago, but it is not at all today. Art is nothing but the creator. Without him, not only does art not exist, but there is not even any interest in it. Marcel Proust said that works of art move us because they reveal another Galaxy to us, that of their creator, a Galaxy that will continue to shine for us for many years after his death. However, today there is a conscious attempt to downgrade the role of the creator and to label the opposite view as Paleolithic obsession. And this is done to the benefit of all other art market players, such as art critics, art historians, university professors, art dealers (a terrible term), cultural managers (another terrible term), specialized journalists, and above all, exhibition curators. But no one except the creator can create from nothing. Yet, they try to win this through the rationale accompanying the work, which also tends to become more important than the work itself.
Are we living in the era of Modernism or Postmodernism?
Despite the fact that my name is often followed by the title of "theorist," it seems that I am not theoretical enough to enjoy categorizations of art. I am far more interested in creation itself. If by the term Postmodernism we mean the prevailing art of the last twenty years, and by Modernism the corresponding art of the seventy years before that, then it is easy to see that the balance of quality and significance undoubtedly leans towards the past. But this is both logical and inevitable. I only wonder why the death of an era must be ceremoniously proclaimed for us to see the next one emerge. The great charm of art lies in the fact that, unlike science, a new truth does not negate the older ones. Therefore, I prefer to assess art based on the artists and their work, without being concerned with the theoretical constructs supporting it.
Today, we all take photographs, after all, photography has its utility. In your seminars in the province, when conversing with your students, will you direct them to see photography more holistically, or will you also discuss the utility of photography in newspapers and media?
The seminar hours are few and it would be a sin to waste them. The various forms and applications of photography are infinite. However, they are more accessible than this strange thing we call a beautiful photograph, a photograph with artistic or personal value. Besides, I do not think anyone will have difficulty reading a newspaper photograph or an advertisement. And especially the public is very familiar, not only because it is bombarded with images, but consider that everyone is now a photographer through their mobile phone. The issue is on one hand to take advantage of the spread of digital technology, and on the other to form criteria and choices, otherwise soon we will have no interest in viewing photographs. We will become bored viewers of photography. My effort, both in brief and longer sessions I conduct in Athens, is to help the public learn to see. It might sound strange. Everyone thinks they know how to view photographs or films. I thought the same earlier. But as years pass and the more one delves deeper, the criteria become more demanding and refined, resulting in greater enjoyment.
In the past, watching a film by Tarkovsky, for example, left us enchanted by the imagery. Today, with the internet and technological achievements, such as the 3D films that inundate us, are you afraid that we will lose the effort we made to perceive the magic of the image?
I think this problem concerns our entire culture, not just art. The more things are offered to us - seemingly for our enjoyment - the more they actually detract from our pleasure. The challenge is not to deny it but to utilize it. We should not deny technology, nor succumb to it. We must control it. This is now extremely necessary in photography, because things that were impossible before are now easily done. Therefore, the difficulty, which always exists, must shift from the technological aspect to the aspect of choices. The issue is to derive joy from what we have, by choosing. So, the issue is not to turn our backs on photographic production, but simply to become more selective.
I imagine that from consumption we will eventually move to selection. We will learn this.
The crises we undergo as a society, as a culture, as an economy, can be positive.
You have said that the great charm of art lies in the fact that, unlike science, a new truth does not negate older ones. Ultimately, are there things in the past we can rely on? Should we, therefore, be aware of older truths?
Woe betide us if there were none. It would be tragic. It would be like not having a memory. Each of us is not a spontaneously existing entity today. Essentially, we are our past. This past makes me reject chronological classifications, saying this is contemporary, that is outdated. For me, Euripides can be much more contemporary than a current author, because he speaks to me of both the past and the present. Science has the ability to progress by stepping on the old but also by negating it. If you admit that the Earth is round, you can't later say it's square, except by negating that it's round. Whereas in art, the round and the square can beautifully dance together forever. And I like this more because I feel the joy of the past and not its weight.
In an introductory note on your website, you say, "I photograph so as not to be merely a spectator of art." Is art everywhere? Can we perceive whether what we see through the lens is a work of art?
Art is not everywhere. It is ridiculous to claim so. We must not confuse the concept of art with the concept of aesthetics, nor creation with art. A person who loves art very much at some point feels like a naive virgin unable to enjoy. Of all the things, what makes photography most tempting, not the most important but the most tempting, is that it is easily done. To be able to create with a camera and have your creation possess cohesion and value, and to be integrated into the world of art and history, you need to learn certain things. Of course, having instinct and intuition is important, but there are things we need to learn, and one of the things we fail to understand that we need to learn is how to see. There's the wise folk saying, "I don't believe my eyes." Yet, people watching a movie or a photograph, and even reality itself, in essence, do not really see it. What interests me in a photograph is not the snapshots; it's the photographer's vision, to see how they view the world, otherwise, it doesn't interest me. In the thirty years that I've been involved with photography, I don't expect to be surprised by a photograph. The photographer is my surprise.