Manolis

About me

I am an artist working with photography and currently live in Athens, Greece. Mostly interested in narratives, lyrical imagery, photobooks and passionate about music and poetry.

My photos themselves are not intended to be beautiful, they are not carefully composed, their exposure is often poor, and many can be poorly focused. I am interested in a mystical draw, a faded memory, moments that succeed one another, transient qualities of the every day. I like the idea of being a thief of the mundane, fragment, decompose and then recompose what appears in front of me. I seek out imperfections, the incomplete and things that linger suspended in the air open-ended. I am not interested in the xerox copy of the world- that I already know-. I use analogue, digital, chemicals, and varieties of physical and non-photographic ways and objects to create and interpret in print my pictures.
Both as an author of work or viewer, I inspire and gravitate toward works that engage and encourage active participation and not reducing me to just become a mere epidermic spectator.

On shooting with people and beyond:
I am interested in photography as a vessel to experience life, human encounters, and places. I view image making as a license to trespass, going often where I am not allowed to go, break past fences and closed doors. Go from fact onto fiction. I don’t shy from visual intimacy and connection; I venomously look for it. I use structure and ideas to start any project, followed with the intention and hope, both dissolve in the creative process.
I am constantly curious what will come out in a visual journey. It is not a pre-determined, pre-planned, pre-washed, pre-cooked, pre-anything. So that first and foremost it’s an interesting lived experience for its authors, in the hope it will transmit the curiosity and interest across to any future viewers of the works.