Photographs probe the delicate lines between the private and the public
Using just a few words to tell a story that has force and density is one of the greatest challenges that a writer may face. If this is true of visual artists, then Lydia Dambassina has come close to accomplishing the task. The photographs in «Family Story I» – the title of her solo show at the Eleni Koroneou Gallery – have frontality and bareness but generate an array of sentiments and thoughts. Although there is nothing openly violent in Dambassina’s images, one cannot help but feel a sense of underlying danger, a sentiment of innocence that is threatened, of the private being exposed to the public. In the past, the artist had worked as a researcher in the field of psychiatric epidemiology and, besides studying fine arts and music, had also trained in psychopathology. Her experience in the field must have made her aware of pain and sensitive to the problems that occupy the human soul. As an artist, she has combined that knowledge with her interest in social issues. Her photographs – which in this body of work are all staged – include both the private and the public and show how one spills over into the other. Frontal, direct and in large format, her work takes into account both the private and the collective sentiment. Hopes and wishes that are strangled by a constricting social reality, privacy and individuality that are jeopardized by the imposition of strenuous laws, the freedom of choice that is stifled by social taboos: These are some of the themes that Dambassina’s photographs allude to. In «Family Story I,» small texts that are made part of the image underline this play between the public and the private, constantly shifting the angle of the viewer’s perspective from one to the other. Dambassina has extrapolated the texts from newspaper articles – mostly from the French press – and in some cases, has edited them in a way that confounds their original meaning. The text is seen in relationship to an image and vice versa; by analogy, the personal and intimate is seen in a social and public context and the public is taken into account as to how it affects personal decisions. In one of the photographs, a woman dressed in a white, nurse’s uniform and standing with her back to the viewer is facing an empty white wall. With a blank white wall in front of her, one has the sense of her being at impasse, of a woman pushed into social marginalization. The small text that is printed on the bottom of the image is an obituary signed by the women relatives and friends of the deceased, a lesbian writer. Two of the exhibition’s photographs do not include texts. A young boy in knickers and with one of his arms bandaged in plaster speaks of an innocence that has prematurely fallen prey to life’s tribulations. Displayed next to it is a photograph that shows the pattern of a hopscotch game drawn in white against a dark background. Both images show their subjects in a verticality that brings to mind a sort of «spiritual ascension.» A lurking sense of death and rebirth renders the images both hard and comforting. In «Family Story I» there is cruelty and warmth. With a visual economy that is noteworthy, Dambassina’s work speaks of the impasses and contradictions that form part of life. «Family Story I,» Eleni Koroneou Gallery (5-7 Mitsaion, 210.924.4271) to April 14.
