Photographers create ‘unofficial history’ of Greek crisis
“Depression Era,” a show of 250 photographs that opens Wednesday at the Pireos Street annex of the Benaki Museum, documents the far-reaching impact of Greece’s brutal economic crisis on the country’s urban and social fabric.
The works presented in the exhibition, which also features a few video installations and a big collage comprising cutouts from print media related to the crisis, are by the Depression Era Project, a collective of more than 35 local photographers, writers, curators, designers and researchers. The photos were shot over the past four years.
The show, which runs through January 11, includes works by Panos Kokkinias, Spyros Staveris, Pavlos Fysakis, Dimitris Michalakis, Eirini Vourloumis and Yiannis Theodoropoulos, and has been curated by Petros Babasikas, Pavlos Fysakis, Yorgos Prinos, Dimitris Tsoumplekas and Pasqua Vorgia.
Speaking at a press conference on Monday, organizers said that the project aims to document the social, historical and economic transformation currently under way in the debt-wracked nation as a way of creating an “unofficial history” of recent developments. Among the objectives set out by the collective is to question the mainstream belief in progress and human improvement.
While personal styles may differ, a sense of gloom, defeat and discontinuity runs through most of the 250 images on the walls of the Benaki. A nondescript dystopian cityscape, a half-finished home, a central Athens street scarred by a rowdy protest rally, a suburban villa behind a closed metal gate, contrasted against occasional flashbacks to the 2004 Olympic euphoria and the days of irrational exuberance.
“The project was inspired by the need to forge a new narrative amid all the noise created by the Greek crisis,” Fysakis, who masterminded the project, told journalists.
Parts of the project have already been showcased at the Bozar Center for Fine Arts in Brussels, at the Mois de la Photo in Paris, the PhotoBiennale of the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, and the Ebros theater squat in Athens.
The Depression Era collective and the KOLEKTIV8 nonprofit group which supports it were founded in 2011. The current project is funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.
Benaki Museum, 138 Pireos, tel 210 345 3111. Wednesday’s opening starts at 8 p.m. Regular visiting hours are Thursdays & Sundays 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. and Fridays & Saturdays 10 a.m. – 10 p.m.
For more information, visit depressionera.gr.
