You have repeatedly expressed the opinion that photography is not intended for galleries but for books and publications. A few days ago, your first exhibition at the New Forms gallery closed with great success. What has changed?
There is no inconsistency in my views. This is proven by asking any photographer whether they prefer a successful exhibition or a nice book. Nine out of ten will choose the book. The only difference now is that books do not find their way to the market, they are anti-commercial. And not just ours, the insignificant ones, but also albums and monographs from very important photographers. This was a great disappointment to me because I thought it more sensible to buy a book with an affordable cost rather than invest in photographs that are much more expensive. Ultimately, my thought was wrong.
And it took you twenty years to realize this?
First of all, it doesn’t bother me at all when someone changes their mind. Whenever it happens. It's a sign of maturity. Secondly, returning to the subject of publications, to my great disappointment, I have noticed over the years that an album sells or doesn’t sell regardless of whether it's good or bad. The few publications of this kind that reach success, i.e., sell in large numbers, are usually the worst. They simply have attractive, perhaps sensationalist, topics. Therefore, I remain a fanatical advocate of publications, but I know it's the hard way. Maybe now with the technology of digital printing in small editions, one can make a few copies without going under. Maybe this somewhat eases things. This is one aspect. On the other hand, photography has entered galleries (and this is now a reality) with one foot. That is, it entered with that part of photography which is categorized as "artistic," which is simply a byproduct of painting in behavior, cost, and size. For someone who does real creative photography, unfortunately, there is no other way to show their work. Magazines, for example, see photography quite differently. I'm not talking about specialized ones, I mean Sunday magazines. That is, if one thinks of the Sunday press, which has many supplements and publishes many photographs, one will notice that it tends to degrade quality by focusing more on the story and the suspense, rather than the inherent quality of the image.
Will you do another exhibition?
I don’t know, maybe, but it will take time.
Twenty years?
(Laughs) The optimistic thing from this whole gallery story is that I see specialization regarding the type of photographs, at least abroad. Not in Greece, though. When I was looking to find out who has the rights to Davidson or Winogrand, I found some well-known galleries that did not have Gursky. Greece does not have the luxury to say "gallery X will specialize in art and gallery Z in photography." There isn’t the audience. Art spaces need to be a bit of everything.
Let's talk about prices. Many price their works at unbelievable and unrealistic heights. It's a psychological defense against the potential commercial failure of their exhibition with the excuse "I don’t set low prices, that’s why I didn’t sell."
I hadn’t thought of it that way - although it might be valid. Maybe there's something else: in Greece, people more easily buy expensive things. That is, they think they are of higher value, let's say. However, the prices I set were based on (approximately) the lowest price of the Paris Photo exhibition, where many galleries from all over the world participate. If I assume that I will sell fifty photographs in my exhibition (due to the low price), the gallery will collect about the same amount of money as in an exhibition where, due to the exorbitant price of the photographs, only five or six photographs would have been sold. The revenue in both cases would be similar, but the penetration into the audience would be much smaller in the latter case. If I had the opportunity to exhibit in New York, maybe the prices would be at an American level. However, I address a broad Greek audience, even though I hear quite often the complaint that I am elitist. I don’t reject elitism because I think it contains a good element, that we are selective, not in the sense of snobbery, of course. I have always addressed a large audience. My students come from a broad spectrum, our exhibitions attract a lot of people. We don’t present only the perfect photographers; we have mediocre photographers too, we publish books with mediocre photographs. I myself am a mediocre photographer.
What is your opinion on numbered copies of photographs?
I clarified from the start to the gallery that I do not accept numbering on my printed photographs. There are great photographers who do not have numbered editions. I cannot teach something for years and now retract it. I am doubly happy that digital technology comes because it indirectly negates two things as I have long argued: that the truth of the photograph is not what counts and that the photograph can be reproduced identically forever. People say that with digital now, the truth is lost. And when was it not lost? They just realize it now. The day before yesterday, kids from a photography school came over. I was showing them the photograph with the window that I use as an advertisement in your magazine for my seminars. In the original (negative), there was a cloud, which I always removed even before the advent of digital means because it added an emotional element that I didn't like in relation to the strictness of the window. The kids noticed that it was an alteration. And who told you it isn't an alteration? So, Photoshop comes now with the ease of editing and eliminates all related discussions. How far you take retouching, etc., is your business. You set the limit.
Another aspect of your exhibition is that you indirectly yet clearly "violated" another of your principles regarding the size of the photographs. They may be small, but the "tetraptychs" compose a large "volume."
My message is this: do you want 1 sq.m. to fill your office? Take four smaller photographs. I jokingly told a journalist that I help with divorces because if someone separates, the wife will take two, and he will take two. Whereas if you have a Gursky one and a half meters, will you cut it in half? (laughs) The quartets I created are somewhat arbitrary, but they have some relation. For example, when we were processing them in Photoshop, we studied their complementarity. In this case, we organized certain sets.
Do you give titles to your photographs?
No. This is also something that doesn't interest me. Even in landscapes, I'm not interested in showing something specific. For instance, a well-known gentleman told me, "I'm offended because you haven't photographed Mani." I haven't set a goal to document all of Greece. I'm not interested if a specific tree belongs to an area. The funny thing with the unlimited number of copies is that many didn't understand that the photographs were for sale because there weren't the usual red dots. When asked by the gallery what we would do about the dots, I was at a loss. Because if you put a dot, many interpret that the specific photograph has already been sold and that there is no other copy - according to the painting model. Another unusual thing in my exhibition is the large, challenging for galleries, number of photographs. They always exhibit a limited number of works. Here we changed the terms.
Has the (Photographic) Circle come full circle?
The Circle changes. I've explained this many times. Just as we change. For me, the Circle had and has both a good and a bad thing: myself. That is, I suppose that if I didn't exist, it either wouldn't have been founded or wouldn't have survived. But of course, when I am present, it's not easy to bypass me. The headquarters of the Photographic Circle remains at Tsakalof 44, in a smaller space than the original. The seminars and Thursday meetings for some years now take place in the auditoriums of the Benaki Museum (similarly in Koumbari and in Piraeus). Now (and you are the first to know this) the large library of the Circle is being donated to the Benaki Museum. The library will be accessible to everyone and will temporarily be housed in the space of the Photographic Archive of the Benaki Museum until a more comfortable space in the Museum can host it. A photographic library is not such a simple thing. It's a very expensive affair. The last three years, financial problems have forced me to stop acquiring new titles. Then, maintenance is required. Many books suffer wear from use, need binding and care. The museum (as we have already agreed verbally) will annually allocate a sum for updating the library with my suggestions, so that the library remains complete. And it will be available to researchers, students, and photography enthusiasts.
Let's close our conversation with a comment from you on whether and to what extent the state, the polity, should get involved in photographic matters.
When during Minister Mikroutsikos' tenure the known "National Policy for Artistic Photography" was published, I considered the whole construct wrong. State intervention is understood only in financing. Perhaps I reacted a bit violently, with a series of my articles that were absolutely sincere but annoyed some, while certain people who were affected attributed it to the fact that I had been excluded from the committee.
So, they didn't focus on the essence of your critique?
I considered many of the things written to be monstrous. If the state wants to intervene, it can do so by providing financial support, in a direct and fair way, checking and investing its money. For example, it could support (anti-commercial, as we said earlier) photographic publications by purchasing a number of books for public and school libraries . There are a hundred different ways to support artistic initiatives. However, when everything is surrounded by bureaucratic organizations, you complicate intervention and support. Ultimately, I would like to add that useful state subsidies are not the essence of the problem. They do not replace creation. And the much-discussed opening to the international scene does not ensure the sought-after quality. The central point of anxiety, joy, and interest remains artistic creation. The vision and the education. My role in photography has had and still has this primarily as its goal. And the National Policies and State Subsidies scarcely deal with it. Perhaps that's why I ultimately don't find the related controversies all that interesting.