"A Sense of Place": Photo album by Zisis Kardianos

(για ελληνικά πατήστε εδώ)

In a previous post [in[+]frame welcomes photographer Zisis Kardianos] we introduced briefly the photographer Zisis Kardianos, and since then we host two very interesting collections of photographs from his work. Today, we ‘ll try to come to know a little better Mr. Kardianos by taking a deeper look into his book “A Sense of Place”. This book is his first photo album, published in 2012, and exclusively comprises photographs from his homeland, the island of Zakynthos in Greece. All included photographs were taken during the period 1984-2012 and according to the photographer:

"...They suggest a tour, off the beaten track, where the personal exploration of my native island is shared in the hope you are left with an emotional awareness of the place rather than a literal understanding of a location..."

The photo album consists of 69 black and white photographs, printed in various sizes. It contains many exceptional photographs that undoubtedly reveal the maturity of Mr. Kardianos photographic course.

Through the photographs the viewer is guided amongst deserted landscapes and crowded festivals, religious events and family moments, people and objects, stone and sea, sky and earth. In most cases, the elements of nature remain dominant. People are mostly lonely and distant, even when they crowd in, while in their carefree moments they seem as being watched through the photographic lense’s ‘keyhole’.

The photographer does not use form in order to impress. He adopts a formalistic laxity that engages and connects viewer and subject in a simple and unforced way. The overall balance of his project emerges as a result of the diversity of subjects and content. Maybe this balance is the “sense of a place” that the photographer attempts to communicate, while he successfully avoids to represent stereotypic images of a popular destination such as Zakynthos. Maybe this sense is nothing but an inner quest that expresses a man’s need to connect with the place he grew up and to love it again, to restore moments from the past, to make peace with them and even to emotionally understand them.

The final impression leaves the viewer with a rather bittersweet taste of a nostalgic puzzle that each one of us can decode according to his personal memories and create his own emotional narrations.