ARIADNEPHOTOGALLERY.COM e-mail : info@ariadnephotgallery.com Director Costis Antoniadis
This catalogue was published by ariadnephotogallery.com on the occasion of the exhibition “The Kythera Photographic Encounters Young Photographic Awards 2006-2011” 3-20 October 2012 © ariadnephotogallery.com - For the edition © The photographers - For the photographs © The writers - For the Texts
THE KYTHERA PHOTOGRAPHIC ENCOUNTERS YOUNG PHOTOGRAPHERS’ AWARD The first Kythera Photographic Encounters took place in October 2002, bringing together photographers, photographic historians, critics, curators and fans of photography for four days of exhibitions, lectures, discussions and socialising. Held annually ever since, the event quickly became an important fixture for Greek photography thanks to the Conference on the History of Greek Photography which lies at the heart of the Encounters. The conference, the only one of its kind in the country, is designed as a forum for the presentation of new and ongoing research on all aspects of historical and contemporary photography in Greece; it is open to both professional and amateur researchers, while photographers are often invited to speak about their own work. From the very beginning, the involvement and participation of
young
photographers
has
been considered crucial to the Encounters’ success, and every year, one of the four shows held at various sites around the island has been a group exhibition for photographers under thirty Young Photographers Exhibition 2009 (photo P. Petsini)
living, working or studying in Greece. In 2002 and 2003, these
exhibitions were selected from the work of students attending the Athens Technical Institute’s Department of Photography and the Focus School of Photography respectively; from 2004 onwards, interested participants were invited to submit work in digital format, between ten and twelve of whom would be invited to take part.
Stelios at the Kythera Photographic Encounters (photo A. Katsakos)
In 2006, eleven curators and teachers of photography were invited to propose one exhibitor each; at the end of the Encounters, one of the exhibitors would be selected by a three-man jury to receive the first Young Photographers’ award, consisting of a solo exhibition the following year accompanied by the publication of a catalogue by tetarto editions. The winner of the 2006 award was Chara Varsamidou for her sequence “Mirrors”. Thereafter, the Young Photographer’s exhibition was selected from submissions. The award winners in subsequent years were Elena Panouli for “Sincerity of Line” (2007), Marili Papadopoulou for “The Borderline” (2008), Giorgos Moutafis for “Unaccompanied Minors” (2009), Loukas Vassilikos for “Street Red” (2010) and Andrea Shkreli for “Inaccessible World” (2011). Sponsorship of the award by tetarto editions continued for two years, resulting in the publication of catalogues for Chara Varsamidou and Elena Panouli; sadly, financial stringencies made it impossible to continue catalogue publication without a sponsor.
Those same financial stringencies and the absence of any official support have led the Kythera Cultural Association, under whose aegis the Encounters are held, to partially suspend the 2012 Kythera Photographic Encounters, at least as far as events on the island of Kythera are concerned. We are therefore extremely grateful to Ariadne Photogallery for offering us the opportunity to maintain continuity by means of a retrospective group exhibition of award winners from 2006 to 2010, plus a solo exhibition for last year’s winner, Andrea Shkreli. Whilst we look forward to holding the twelfth Kythera Photographic Encounters on their home ground once again in 2013, this new link with a world-wide audience by means of an online gallery is one whose value we fully appreciate, and which we hope to maintain in future. Bringing together the radically different work of six such talented young photographers in an online exhibition cannot but increase awareness of the vitality of contemporary Greek photography. John Stathatos Artistic Director
Kythera Photographic Encounters Award 2006
Chara Varsamidou: Mirrors “The people depicted use their bodies silently; they seem to be undergoing real emotional and physical pain. Their dramatic gestures and the symbolic elements suggest that they acting out certain roles. Despite being completely absorbed by their emotions, they submit their gaze, inviting the spectator to view them, to enter into their world. They demand recognition, acknowledgement and response. My intention was to intervene between these two levels of the gaze, to direct their intersection and create the preconditions for an interaction engaging observer and observed in a fluid, subjective relationship�.
Kythera Photographic Encounters Award 2006
Kythera Photographic Encounters Award 2007
Elena Panouli: Sincerity of Line Her subject is constructed space. The city. The city without the presence of man. The city as the trace of man. Severe, almost uncompromising images. Square format, frontal composition. Constructed space is represented with horizontal and vertical lines, usually with a flattened depth of field. Place remains indeterminate, time is effaced. The sky is not the kind of sky which encourages reverie, simply another slab of geometric colour. The light, too, is frontal, shadowless. When they appear, shadows become an additional geometric feature.
Eleni Maligoura
Kythera Photographic Encounters Award 2007
Kythera Photographic Encounters Award 2008
Marili Papadopoulou: The Borderline “I return to my childhood home. I am suspended on the borderline between the conscious and the unconscious. I study the house’s history, recall my grandmother’s old stories, try on different roles for myself. I watch the light fall through the rusty windows, revealing the signs of time past, exchanges between old and new interiors. I peer into the mirror…”
Kythera Photographic Encounters Award 2008
Kythera Photographic Encounters Award 2009
Giorgos Moutafis: Unaccompanied Minors “War, enforced conscription, physical and psychological violence, the death of their parents or simply disastrous economic conditions are only a few of the reasons why hundreds of children find themselves obliged to flee their countries. The journey to Europe is difficult, the crossing of the Aegean perilous. Some of the children make it. Others are lost. In the narrative, the term illegal immigrant always precedes the term child�.
Kythera Photographic Encounters Award 2009
Kythera Photographic Encounters Award 2010
Loukas Vassilikos: Street Red “Photographing in the street, you feel like the spectator of a performance directed and staged for you only, that the actors, set, activity are there for your eyes only. Paraphrasing the sign from the Magic Theatre in Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf, the streets are a theatre “for photographers only”. And you, the photographer, are there to become a witness, a narrator of little stories, snapshots of an invisible performance in which the colour red rules”.
Kythera Photographic Encounters Award 2010
Kythera Photographic Encounters Award 2011
Andrea Shkreli: Inaccessible World Andrea Shkreli’s sequence “Inaccessible World” is the result of a three year-long involvement with the tattoo parlour of Nick and his friends. This is the record of a world literally inaccessible to most people, one whose habits and customs obey different rules. The images arrive unencumbered by captions or explanations. Some may recall that, beyond the ephemeral fads of fashion, hard-core tattooing is traditionally associated with marginalised social groups, who try in this way to assert dominion over at least their own bodies. Powerful photographs of a claustrophobic, neon-lit world depicted unsentimentally and without condescension.
John Stathatos
Kythera Photographic Encounters Award 2011