TimeSilence Photography Friends - SUMMER 2021

SPRING 2021 / 51

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 52

SPRING 2021 / 53

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 54

SPRING 2021 / 55

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 56 YIANNIS KRIKIS

SPRING 2021 / 57 PLACES OUT OF ORDER Locations near large urban centers where thousands of people flock in them to swim or take a holiday. Once the weather cools down the places are being deserted and have a completely different image, where you can wander without the annoying presence of thousands of people and cars that alter the feeling of the landscape. The change of the weather gives a variety in the atmosphere and lighting and highlights each time a different face of the landscape. Everything seems waiting the next summer to come into life.

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 58

SPRING 2021 / 59

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 60

SPRING 2021 / 61

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 62

SPRING 2021 / 63

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 64

SPRING 2021 / 65

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 66

SPRING 2021 / 67

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 68

SPRING 2021 / 69

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 70

SPRING 2021 / 71

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 72

SPRING 2021 / 73

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 74

SPRING 2021 / 75

ARTicle TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 76 © Gihan Tubeh IS THIS PHOTOGRAPHY? The photographic image as an experience by Yannis Mezes https://www.facebook.com/yannis.mezes

SPRING 2021 / 77 Photography is different from the other arts, because it is in charge, one might say, of the photographic referent, which is not the case in the other arts. The photographic referent is a heavy anchor, a prison, which restricts the freedom of move- ment of the photograph itself. It is its limitation. Because of this limitation, photography was combined with the capture of a photographic truth. We should comment here that the photo captures a visual reality. A visual reality, however, is not a visual truth. Depending on the choice of the frame, what you put in and what you leave out, only this, turns the visual reality into a visual truth of the photographer and only the photographer. This advantage of the camera, to faithfully convey a visual reality, is also the banner of an army of photographers, which should not be tarnished by other uses, slipping into other ancestral art forms and other affinities. But how can one prevent another army from wanting to take advantage of it and want to use it as a strange “eye” with a different physiology from that of the hu- man eye? The camera is just “a camera”. How to use it concerns only the operator, his ingenuity and his intention. The text below is a reflection on the following topic: Can the photograph break the shackles of the visual referent and depict “the other” to which it points? In other words, can the photograph “commit suicide” in front of our eyes, at the time of its viewing, in order to free itself from its own body? In no case is the photo treated as a whole. Photography exists and manifests itself in a large number of uses and purposes. All kinds of photography are equally important and necessary, but no kind can, jealously, aspire to the exclusivity of its represen- tation. THE FORGOTTEN POWER OF THE IMAGE The image, inherent in the beginnings of human history, constitutes the first human speech. It is the language – “logos” - for the visible and the invisible at the same time. Seen through the eyes of today we are perhaps drawn into misguided judgments about the function of the image: Is it the re- cording of experience? Is it decorative? Is it metaphysical in order to bind the spirits of the depicted entities? Is it adorable? Whatever its function, it is the imprinted human reason for the world around it. As a genetic residue, producing images is in our

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 78 nature. The advent of the written code of communication was not groundbreaking but consisted in the virtual depiction of the successive representations described in a sequence (hiero- glyphics - ideograms). The bursts of time sublimated the small details of the images, leaving their skeleton as a sedi- ment, gradually slipping from description to symbolism. With the cultivation of the written language and its spread, the function of the image in the circles of people who knew writing was weakened. But how many were these people? What was their percentage in all times even at the beginning of the 20th century? The image maintained its strong posi- tion in groups and classes of people who did not know how to write. In recent history (locally and chronologically), the religious perception of the faithful originated and was rendered by illustration in places of worship. In these groups of people, the func- tion of the image has the same place as it had in its beginnings. A function mainly perceptual and secondarily aesthetic. The strong position, the power of the image, is underestimated in us today, because of the rational catechism we have under- gone about the “how” to deal with the world and existence. The superiority of the image is shown with “Iconoclasm”, which plundered Byzantium to exhaustion. The Iconoclasm is a battle to the end for the right of “representation”, the right ultimately in the image. The introduction of mass education as a social practice created a sense of the superiority of written and oral speech, as a predominant field of the human intellect. But no one can deny the fact that the written word requires time and effort that the masses do not have or do not intend to spend. And finally, the written word is addressed to a shrinking group of people, it is not about the ecumenical. With the advent of the digital age and inextricably linked to digital convenience, the majority of people describe their experi- ence with the image. It is produced quickly - effortlessly, transmitted quickly and consumed just as quickly (unfortunately, as

SPRING 2021 / 79 the conversations at the cafe). It should be noted here that the exhaustive photography is not about things “worth photographing”, as one would say, but the daily life in all its events, e.g. cooking food, shopping market, neighborhood tavern, etc. It is a kind of life diary and amateur photographers may take fewer photos per day than those who have a camera. In a free rendering of the correspondence of the world of images with the first human writing, I attribute the Chinese ideograms with corresponding keywords in the search of the flickr photo site: Fire

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 80 Moon

SPRING 2021 / 81 Faith

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 82 The image as a language - “logos” - has an ellipticity and a superiority: it requires the synergy of the viewer to a greater extent than the synergy required by the author from the reader. In the written word the description of an object is limited and exhaust- ed to the extent chosen by the author. In the visual description it is up to the mood and skill of the viewer to make a meticulous reading, but it is not limited. The viewer can recognize in an image possibly more or even different things than the intention of the creator. Only the fact that the use of explanatory text - caption - which can be a page for an image, demonstrates the image as a kind of condensed speech. THE EXHAUSTION OF THE “OBVIOUS” Amateur photography is experiencing its existential problem with some exacerbation today: What is the usefulness and there- fore the reason for the existence of amateur photography? How does this type of photo differ from the “other” photo, the mul- tiple reproduced? This anxiety is also evident in the way photographers handle their photographs, constituting a “first answer”: The differentia- tion of the produced images from the “obvious” in the sense of the faithful rendering of a visual reality. Excessive familiarity with the obvious leads to a denial of the obvious as an artistic expression. The obvious has reached the point of exhaustion, since it has exhausted itself. Creators and viewers turn their gaze away from the visual data in search of an expression in uncharted interiors, the visible of which is a kind of epidermal crust. The question arises: Is this trend just a joke for “any” differentiation? No, it is not. It is the search for a new role and a new purpose. It is impossible not to associatively make a reduction to the beginning of the twentieth century and shift the “photographic problem” to the “painting problem”: With the advent of photography, a key role of painters was abolished - the rendering of portraits and landscapes. Under this historical need, painting chose different paths directed either to the dreamy - surrealism - or to the invisible and conceptual. Photography is faced with the same “historical need” today.

SPRING 2021 / 83 A NEW VISUAL LANGUAGE Many times, I find myself standing in front of photos that move me and statue me at the same time. While I cannot understand them, they are particularly attractive to me, creating a storm of thoughts and feelings. This storm of diverse internal functions, I realize that it creates an “living experience” for me. Experience, as a concept, presupposes the collective participation of all human perceptual mechanisms, with the rational intel- lect lagging behind in speed of processing compared to other more primitive - in a series of time evolution - mechanisms. According to the “deep web” there is the “deep ego”, the “deep ego” which moves in the view of these images. Photography directly affects this deep, non-reasonable “ego”. A misunderstanding could arise here. The deep “ego” is not individual. As members of a society, the deep personal “ego” does not differ from person to person. Sculpted and shaped by the depths of time, it is a “deep ego” component of human nature and constitutes a common place, making it universal. We can therefore assume that this experience is not radically different from person to person. Therefore, this experience is not basically personal, completely personalized and free. It is a deeply social place. The question arises as to whether the word code can produce or describe such experiences. Take for example our emotional landscape: Our emotional world is occupied by a large number of emotions that are not com- pletely distinct from each other. Nevertheless, our verbal code groups them in distinct meanings: “Sadness” empty “Sorrow” empty “Melancholy” empty. Between them, there is a constant transition from one to the other, like the colors of the visible spectrum. In other words, there are intermediate nuances, tonal gradations of emotions, which, however, the verbal code fails to render. And besides, we do not know if people’s feelings are the same as they were a hundred years ago. The changes in the way of life, the social experience, the new conditions of existence, form a, not basically, different, emotional landscape but they multiply, constantly dividing, the emotional world, highlighting many subtle nuances. On the contrary, our verbal code evolves very slowly (no new words are made), unable to keep pace with the internal changes, the complexity of the interior landscape. The tonal differences of the emotional and of the inner life in general are reduced to the closest verbal expression and they cannot avoid their inappropriate grouping in a single verbal term. This is where the superiority of the image comes into play. Free to generate new codes can capture these nuances, this com-

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 84 plexity, without having a need for revolution, circumvention of deliverable codes. The traditional way of reading an image is crushed in this light. The detailed description of an image, in the form of scientific research or simple necropsy, with the delimitation of the frame, the subject, the form, the content, the consciously declared, the unconsciously implied - endless list of scalps and tools, in search of a valid scientific truth, is cancelled in full. The suggestion, then, lies in the treatment of this photograph, not as a synthesis of ingredients, but as a single visual word in an unknown vocabulary that does not split, is not sliced and, as food, cannot be separated into its ingredients after cooking. The whole image is one and the slightest change gives another word, a different entry in the creator’s visual vocabulary. Photography is now offered not only as an exhibit to read and study, not only for the delight of the eyes but also as an experi- ential act enriching and expanding the inner vocabulary of those who come in contact with it. An image that is released from its visual reference and that offers a “visual experience”. © Gihan Tubeh © Maria Karkavilla

© Manolis Karatarakis © Maria Karkavilla © Manolis Karatarakis © Manolis Karatarakis SPRING 2021 / 85

THE MONTHLY PROJECTS TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 86 June 2021 / Urban Stories July 2021 / By the Sea August 2021 / Free Topic - Artist’s Choice

SPRING 2021 / 87

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 88 June 2021 / Urban Stories Alexandros Sakellaris Fuad Sarker Katerina Tsoukala Sakis Mouchtarides Vasilis Kouvalis Yiorgos Papadopouloss

SPRING 2021 / 89

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 90 Alexandros Sakellaris GREECE FB: alexandros.sakellaris.5

SPRING 2021 / 91

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 92

SPRING 2021 / 93

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 94 Fuad Sarker BANGLADESH FB: fuad.sarker.92

SPRING 2021 / 95

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 96

SPRING 2021 / 97

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 98

SPRING 2021 / 99

TIMESILENCE PHOTOGRAPHY friends / 100 Katerina Tsoukala GREECE FB: katerina.tsoukala.581