Creative drive in the backdrop
Henri Cartier-Bresson, the legendary French master of black-and-white photography, used to say that photography is nothing more than placing your head, eye and heart on the same axis. Fresh work from photographer Giorgis Gerolymbos, currently on display at the a.antonopoulos.art gallery (20-22 Aristophanous, Psyrri) until May, does not assault the emotions, as it introduces the viewer to a cool-headed dialogue with Gerolymbos’s images. Internal space, light shafts, air vents, the rooms and the secret attic of the Aghios Pandeleimonas Church in Acharnon all raise the question «I wonder what it feels like in there?» Gerolymbos was born in Paris in 1973 to architect parents and was almost forced to define his relationship to the constructed and human environment from early on in life. Following studies in photography and architecture, in Greece and abroad, and after numerous collaborations with architectural publications for which he provided almost all the illustrations, it was time for the young photographer to discover his own visual idiom. He had to find something that went beyond the commonplace, the obvious and trite, and in this he was successful. The exhibition «Interim,» like his previous show, «Terza Natura,» is a personal decoding of a series of spaces. Each of the 13 large-scale photographs that are on display at the Psyrri gallery has a story, though the story matters little in the end. Likewise, the visitor does not need to know the location of the place being shown. Indeed, the photographer has omitted any details of the locations of his photographs on purpose. In contrast to the architectural albums he has produced which place a good deal of emphasis on the exact details of the how, where and when of a frigidly beautiful building, this exhibition focuses on the charm of anonymity. Here, instead of giving his audience a guided tour as he has done in the albums with well-lit shots, Gerolymbos makes us open our eyes to the «landscapes» that exist around us, but which we rarely perceive. «When I am taking photographs for a publication, I do a professional job that does nothing to squash my energy and restlessness. Last summer, I spent many long, sweltering days holed up in the Church of Aghios Pandeleimonas for a particular publication. The photographs were technically pristine. But a shot I took in the attic, with some old chairs, a chandelier and the light coming in from the window, gave me the courage to see that project through to its end. A while ago, I delivered a lecture whose title, I think, says it all: ‘The Photography that Helps me Live and the Photography for which I Live,’» said the artist to Kathimerini. The last part of Gerolymbos’s work has been influenced by the doctoral thesis on which he is working at present. «I am researching the American New Topographics movement, which began in Rochester, New York, in the USA, in 1975. Its basic principle was that the landscape is not the nature you see after driving for six hours through a national park, but all the things that surround you at home, at the office,» he explains. «Interim» also addresses in a way the particular phase of life Gerolymbos is going through: «A thesis forces you to be disciplined and to think of a lot of other things other than yourself. In fact, it is nothing more than exploring your own internal, unknown spaces.»
