Visions, Decoded #07: Andreas Neophytou - the space, the time, the man & the street

(για ελληνικά πατήστε εδώ)

Overcoming the automatic and implicit mirror reflections, the world appears to be established on the key components of space, time and man. The color facilitates the specification of its main points and seemingly blurs the borders between the diversity of age and nationality, the spatial coherence and the temporal orchestration. At first glance, everything seems settled: through the reflection of another mirror, the lens captures two natures, one raw and one mediated, to represent all the characteristics of comfort and excellence. However, the charming landscape of Cyprus fits everything: the grief and the indifference, the summer and the lazy mood, the different identities of a world that readjusts itself early through a continuous and incessant game of reflections.

Testing out the artistic sense of the street photography, Cypriot photographer Andreas Neophytou manages to include simultaneously a series of life scenes in their complexity in space. With the use of analog and digital technology, Neophytou reproduces life through contrasting prisms and penetrates its apparent similarity with the first. His work bears the characteristics on what Barthes commented: “Photograph sometimes makes appear what we never see in a real face (or in a face reflected in a mirror): the emergence of what we see in reality, from genetic characteristics to the seeds of death. However, Neophytou’s camera dynamics, which stems from the aesthetics of the street, plays with the color, without denying its black and white perspective, while presenting interesting instances of recording.

(visit Andreas Neophytou's selected gallery)

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Ursula-Helen Kassaveti (photo by Vivi Kaparou) was born in Athens in 1980. She holds a B.A. in Literature (University of Athens, Athens School of Philosophy), a M.A. in Cultural Studies (University of Athens, Department of Communication and Mass Media) and a Ph.D. in Film, Genre Theory and Sociology at the same department. Her research interests revolve around Popular Culture (film/music), Visual Ethnography, and Cultural Studies. She has been a post-doc researcher at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where she co-taught the undergraduate module “Social History of Mass Media” (2015) and is now a research fellow at University of Patras. She has made various announcements in international and Greek conferences and has published articles and a monography on film and media. She teaches “Discourse and Visual Analysis” and “Greek Film & Culture” at “Kostis Palamas” Longlife Education Program at the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens.

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