Useless Images
At the end of Tsakalof street, where the road becomes uphill and the left sidewalk is buried these days in dry leaves, right behind Saint Dionysius, there are two tiny black doors that lead to another temple, the one of photography. Behind them hides a meeting place, a dark chamber, a library of 2000 volumes, a teaching and projection room, a sitting area, and a small bar. Also tiny, with black dominating. About four hundred members of the association "Photographic Circle" enjoy it. And they owe it to Platon Rivellis.
Platon Rivellis is one of those fortunate ones who find the strength to completely change their lives, even if belatedly. In 1983, at the age of 37, he decides to abandon the law practice, which he was successfully practicing, to dedicate himself to the art and teaching of Photography. Why Photography. "Because it was easy," he answers. The primary goal was to engage with art. And at that age, it’s easier to learn to handle a camera than, for example, a musical instrument. He leaves for America to attend some seminars by Garry Winogrand, a defining acquaintance, and returns to Greece full of plans having already discovered his talent in teaching and having acquired a small number of students. He proceeds to establish the "Photographic Circle," a space that operates continuously and is a meeting place for everyone involved in photography. Meanwhile, he has opened a photographic equipment store, the "Photo space." It seems paradoxical, but while this store was gathering queues of customers, it never made a profit. So, he closes it. As it neighbored the premises of the "Photo space," the "Photographic Circle" gains a few more square meters, and its members, who were meanwhile multiplying, find two more rooms to gather, chat, browse through books, wonder, and learn.
Platon Rivellis's views on Art - with a capital A - have been long established. He writes in the Monologue about Photography: "After fulfilling basic needs, it is considered necessary nowadays to immerse everyone in the purifying waters of Art. This totalitarian perception creates unhappy people, hypocritical people, and bad artists. To engage in the therapy of an art, one must have wondered at some point. Must have suffered. Must have been bothered by the disorder of this World." He considers Art and massiveness incompatible concepts. "Communication in Art," he says, "is always unique and personal. Along with love, it is the only non-mass communication that remains to us." And it is art "the bridge to the transcendental. The artist does not express feelings but the insurmountable need for creation. To succeed, his desire alone is not enough. Talent, education, and work are required. Inspiration by itself does not exist." And something else, for us mere mortals. "If we do not understand works of art, it is usually not the artist's fault, but ours and our education. Quality exists around us. We just need to learn to see it and seek it. In the end, it becomes a drug. Its absence hurts us, and its contact relieves us."
The above is common ground for Rivellis's students. Their teacher's personality, his readings, and his ability to transmit the knowledge he draws from them captivate most and convince them. Those who disagree eventually depart. They suffocate and move away. The rest believe him: "Photography neither illustrates nor captures. Nor does its subject exhaust its content. Photography is an illusion created by weaving content with form, a transformation of the world through the artist-photographer’s personality." They believe it and strive to make it tangible. And they are fully aware that when Platon Rivellis talks about artistic photography, he does not refer to photojournalism or advertising photography. In both, "the messages are easy, digestible, and primal. The symbols are recognizable, and fashions omnipotent. Photojournalism often surprises with the absence of moral barriers and in any case, "the evils of the world - a world that is informed to the utmost by television - are not addressed with good or bad photographs.
Advertising photographers enrage him when they declare themselves as artists, surpassing their role, knowledge, and skills. And the aesthetics of advertising photographs is imposed as the aesthetics of art photography, contributing to visual confusion, exploiting visual illiteracy. However, he does not get angry with Meisel and Madonna. "He doesn't even pretend."
Rivellis prefers the photographers of the "useless," as he says, images. Images that don't scream that they are beautiful, that do not emerge from specific techniques, that are not accepted - as anti-commercial - by galleries. He himself - like most of his students - insists on taking black and white photographs. He agrees with Wenders. "Color gets in the way between the emotion and the viewer... The great enemy of photography is realism, and color is the iron ball that keeps you tied to it."
He learned the art of photography from books. Flipping through albums of Bresson, Kertesz, Cameron, Winogrand, Evans, Robert Frank, and many others. "Photography is not something you stare at for hours. The first consumption is quick and followed by more over time. That's why an album is more important than an exhibition. Some think that flipping through a photo book in a bookstore is enough, they've read it. But the book is like sonnets. You return to it. And you are moved again, without knowing why." These days, when the market is flooded with photographic publications and "works of art, worse than the posters of the Greek National Tourism Organization (EOT)," the Photographic Circle presents five tiny books: "Wanderings" by Nikos Dimolitsas, "Rodopou" by Alexandros Voutsas, "Photographs" by the former monk Silouanos (secular name Spyros Panagiotopoulos), "Neighborhood" by Andreas Schoinas, and "Ruins" by Rivellis himself.
He went to Leningrad, Prague, Rome, Constantinople, and the Kerameikos, flirted with the ancients, tombs, and statues, and captured in his photographs "pieces of space and time from the theater of an eternal world." Platon Rivellis, so sure and absolute as some accuse him, is in turn tormented by common weaknesses, such as the fear of death or the anxiety of balancing like an acrobat between joy and sadness. However, he has discovered, with effort and persistence, the refuge of art. And he is rewarded.