Σεμινάρια Φωτογραφίας (2024-25)

 

Little Georgia

At first, I met Nino. Nino is my Georgian neighbor, in downtown Athens. Actually, “Nino” is a very common name in Georgia. I eventually met more Georgian women; i started photographing them, while I was hanging out with them and while our children were playing together.

Soon I realized that the Georgian community is considered to be one of the largest migrant communities in Greece. Also, the trend of migration from Georgia to Greece is a predominantly female phenomenon; Georgian women come to Greece to work mainly as domestic workers (cleaning, childcare, taking care of the old or sick) and often they face stigmatization, financial exploitation and illegalization.

I photographed some Georgian women in Athens, at their homes, on their days off, as they hang-out or celebrate. Finally, I got more and more familiar with their lifestyle, and their practices of mutual support and empowerment in their new home country.

The aim of this project is to challenge stereotypes and racial prejudices against Georgian women. Documenting a part of their lives is a small contribution to that cause.

Little Georgia is about an “invisible” migrant woman’s world.

(2014-2021)

Letters from Georgia

My Georgian friends in Athens always said to me: “Why don’t you visit Georgia? There are so many things you can see there”. So, in the summer of 2018, I visited Kutaisi for the first time. Their relatives offered to host me for some days. Until now, I consider my trip to Georgia as one of the most meaningful and interesting trips I’ve ever made.

In a way, the photographs explore the places where my friends were born and raised and the people they left behind. As I found out, Imereti (the region where Kutaisi belongs) has the highest emigration rate in Georgia, particularly to Greece. Georgian women come to Greece to work mainly as domestic workers: cleaning, childcare, taking care of the old or sick. Usually, older women migrants send money back home to support the families of their children. Younger immigrants either consider the possibility of buying a house in Georgia to settle down after their return or, if they already have a family of their own, they support their children.

Show me what you got

In Athens, b-boying or breaking or break-dance was developed mainly since the ’00s, as a youthful, working class, mostly immigrant culture. Breaking has a dynamic presence, an active role within the hip hop community. It is a scene with its own –relatively independent– life next to the (dominant) rap scene.

Between 2014 and 2017 I photographed the hip hop dance community of Athens: mainly the b-boys, the b-girls and some poppers. I hung out with them or went to places they used to train themselves, such as the Athens Conservatory. I spent time at Syntagma Square while they were cyphering, as well as in battles and street shows. The b-boys and the b-girls dance low on the floor during the “breaks” –the rhythmic breakdown parts of the songs that are played repeatedly by the dj.

The pictures I have taken depict my impressions from these two-three years of hanging out and communicating with this community of break-dance and hip hop dancers. In my images I tried to condense and get across the relationships, the people, the atmosphere of a lively situation as I experienced it.

“Show me what you got” is an expression that is used between b-boys and b-girls, mostly during battles. It means something like “show me your skills as a dancer, your experience, your talent, your personality”.

End of the day?

“Centuries of capitalist discipline have gone a long way toward producing individuals who shrink from others for fear of touch. See the way we live our social spaces: buses, trains, each passenger closed in its own space, its own body, keeping well-defined, though invisible boundaries; each person its own castle.”

George Caffentzis and Silvia Federici, “Mormons In Space”, 1982.

Late in the evening, people pass through Syntagma and Omonoia Square. What was their day like? Good? Bad? The same? Or perhaps their day just started? People of different gender, age, class and race wait for the red light to turn green. Or they just wait inside a bus. All these different people share moments of stillness. In these moments, it is always interesting to observe their faces, gestures or body postures, which seem unfeigned and even unguarded. “People’s faces are in naked repose in the subway”, as Walker Evans put it, commenting on his photographs of people in the subway of New York City, in the late 30s. Indeed, it looks like this project gave me a glimpse of something private in a public space.

In the last pictures, people wear masks. Obviously, wearing a mask hides facial expressions, making people seem even more distant. They all look the same.

(2019-2020)

Athens city center

The center of Athens is made from the dreams of people from all over the world: people from East Europe, the Balkans, Africa and Asia have been constantly immigrating here, since the 90s. They work in low paid jobs and usually without documents. Αgainst the institutionalized racism, a new multicultural life is developed in the streets, in the parks and in the old apartments of downtown Athens.

(2008-2014)

80 km from Marrakesh

80 km from Marrakesh means home. It means tea, peanuts and dates. It means hot bread. It means chickens and horses. It means sisters and brothers. It means mamma and papa. It means olive and orange trees. It means visiting the cemetery and searching for grandma’s grave. It means old stories about grandma’s ghost walking around. It means talking with people that you haven't seen for a long time. It means hearing the latest news. It means a heart beating hard when hearing those news. It means crying when remembering. It means a self that does not exist anymore. It means an absence.

80 km from Marrakesh has been kept in a box and has been carried in a pocket for thousands of kilometers all the way to a western metropolis. As a secret. As a bitter sweet.

80 km from Marrakesh is a series of photographs about Abida's visit to his parents' house in Morocco. Abida immigrated to Greece, almost 10 years ago. Now, he lives in Athens.

(January 2019)

Tarlabasi

Tarlabasi in Istanbul reminds of old photographs: children without toys playing in the streets, transgender people who could do a PhD in marginalization, clotheslines between the houses, street vendors selling mussels, pilaf and salepi, uprooted Kurds who are full of nostalgia.
Nowadays Tarlabasi is the refuge of Syrians. A few years ago it became a home for immigrants from Nigeria. Further in the past, the first residents of this neighborhood were the minorities, Greeks and Armenians: very few of these people have remained, while the following waves of immigrants never felt like locals. Maybe they had the curse of the exiled. As soon as they started feeling like they belonged somewhere, they were faced with the monsters of gentrification. The beasts stood up like a sharp knife in the heart of the city. The neighborhood was sold-off at cut-price to the new bourgeoisie. So the people were faced with the next stage; they became homeless. Their children had to be placed further and deeper inside the city’s grime.
Tarlabasi stayed on in the old photographs. The photographers, who will come later, will find something monotonous, colorless and plasticized in this neighborhood.

Text by Caner Yilmaz (2014)

I dreamed of the city

The concept of the city may be something general, vague and obscure. The city can give the impression of an incessant engine, which works aimlessly day and night. An iron impersonal routine –somehow- unwillingly absorbs us.
The years pass by.
The urban architecture, the street furniture, the transportation, the telecoms: sometimes all the people, all the things, all the details surrounding us can even become invisible. Photography can make them visible again, but from a totally different perspective.

These photographs were taken during my stay in the U.K., between September 2008 and May 2009.