Wildfires in Greece

In August, due to other assignments already booked, I wasn’t able to cover the big wildfires that broke out around Greece. However, on the 13th of August, I had the chance to visit Lalas village near Olympia in Peloponnese, to photograph the German firefighters that came voluntarily to support the Greeks. Even though there where no more big fires, the burned area was enormously big and the landscape looked kind surreal.

  • Above: A German firefighter rests inside a tent at a makeshift camp that they have set up in Lalas village, near Olympia.

*Click on photos to enlarge



Chios - Vial refugee camp | August 2021

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Chios island covering the arrival of Amal - a giant puppet of a 9 y.o Syrian girl crossing through Turkey and Greece with central Europe to be the final destination.

While on the island I had the chance to photograph the island’s refugee camp, Vial.
Not as crowded as it used to be but what got my attention is that a lot of people recognized as refugees where still living inside that camp. Even though they are now eligible to travel inland, the lack of money - since there is no more economical assistance provided by the state and finding job is almost impossible - force’s them to stay there stranded.

*A few days after my visit, the huts depicted here - which happened to be part of a makeshift camp within the official one - was destroyed by the state.


TOLERANCE(S) exhibitions

Today is the opening of the group exhibition TOLERANCE(S) which I am happy and honored to be a part of it.

TOLERANCE(S) 
Lens based media exhibition in the framework of the Art + Culture vs Xenophobia
Project
Curated by: Kostas Ioannidis, Eleni Mouzakiti 
Eos Gallery, Heiden street 38, Athens 
Opening: September 2nd 2021 
Duration: September, 2 – 7 

Artists:
Nora Adwan, Socrates Baltagiannis, Pericles Boutos, Knut Bry, Stefanos Chronis, Sakis Dazanis, Christoforos Doulgeris, Antonis Elias, Elena Efeoglou, Kuesti Fraun, George Kanis, M’hammed Kilito, Panayiotis Lamprou, Claudia Lucacel, Aydin Matlabi, Camille Mienievska, Marita Pappa, Lefteris Paraskevaidis, Maria Paschalidou, Christos Sotiropoulos, Hiro Tanaka, Sofia Tolis, Soti Tyrologou, Avior Yinon, Spyros Zervoudakis, Yiannis Zindrilis, Tasos Zoidis, Maria Zygomala

As we, humans, become more and more sensitive to external factors that deregulate us, we try to locate these factors all around us: in the air that we breath, in the things we touch (or being touched by), in the sheer matter we accept inside us. In this context, the term “intolerance” alludes to an inevitable physical, almost reflexive, reaction of the organism which might be avoided either by avoiding the underlying factor or, ideally, by way of its extinction. Speaking of a society: Where are the limits beyond which being exposed to otherness might lead to intolerance reactions?
Are these limits subject to any adjustments in the case that a social organism reacts as being overexposed to those “external” factors? How can a society develop mechanisms in order not to face otherness as a would-be pathogenic agent? Knowingly we phrased our questions in the hygienic jargon of our era, the unavoidable lingua franca of the years to follow, in an effort to allude to the implications of such an unwitting use of words.
Through our open call for the Tolerances exhibition we trawled for works which seek to familiarise us with the various conceptualisations of otherness, that is, works related with the concept of tolerance in the case of the other or even in a more general sense with the need to tolerate aspects of our own self. There are also collaborative projects and some of them involve the communities giving them an active role; projects focusing on interfaith discussion, works supporting the idea of mutual understanding or demonstrating means of reintegration. Of equal importance to our minds were projects raising issues related to the use and conceptualisation of urban space under the prism of multiculturalism. In the current circumstances works related with the traumas of the refugee crisis and immigration seem more than relevant. We might add that whereas the photography based works operate in a rather documentary mode in videos or performative videos meaning is articulated in most of the cases through an introverted optic. Regardless, however of the artistic practices, the works of the exhibition highlight the idea of sustainable multicultural societies.
Kostas Ioannidis

Opening hours:
Thursday, September 2nd: 18:00 - 21:30
Friday, September 3rd: 16:30 - 20:00
Saturday, September 4th: 12:00 - 15:30
Monday, September 5th: 16:30 - 20:00
Tuesday, September, 6th: 16:30 - 20:00

Using Format