The Sense of a Dialogue

The photographic unit “The Sense of a Dialogue” forms part of project which attracted my attention during different times during the decade of the 2000s - 2010s. It concerns a photographic dialogue between the natural environment and any constructions in the urban and around the urban space in Greece. My intention was to create a unit with coherence as far as the suggested content of the photographs was concerned and to a secondary degree, regarding appearance. Images of buildings, landscapes, ships and any man-constructed environment created for a limited period of time, although its effect may go on for much longer. I photographed various constructions, often simple and also the tracks they left in time as they get gradually ‘absorbed’ in the natural environment. I have been seeking the visual dialogue between the human intervention and the environment. A contemporary dialogue concerning identity, borders, security, violation, the traditional, the modern and their disputes. In Greece, the 1960s and 1970s but also later, construction had expanded to such a degree that it had been called “the steam engine of economy” During that period the new consumer ethics and the new aesthetic codes, established for the first time a wider middle urban class which had not been subconsciously sensitized to environmental issues. With the absence of a suitable legal framework to protect, a great number of historic and traditional buildings were taken down in the name of development, changing the appearance, first of the city centers and later that of the countryside, as the country was turning into a mass tourism destination. Having these life impressions, I started in the 1990s my photographic roaming in the urban space and in the potential dialogue with the environment.