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)