Emotional glimpse into the complex world we live in through photography
The Museum of Cycladic Art recently made an important gesture to photojournalism as a genre. Journalist Sotiris Danezis, the creator of Mega Channel’s television series «War Zone,» has put on display still photographs he has taken in between filming in locations all over the world. «Few people knew that I was holding a camera and I was shooting during the filming breaks,» he said at a press conference held to present the exhibition, which is titled «A Complex World.» Although this is the work of a non-professional photographer, the quality of some of the exhibits could be compared to the work of the renowned Magnum agency’s photojournalists. Danezi wanted to record the conditions that prevailed in each country. The display features 100 printed images from 25 countries. It is divided into five thematic sections: needs and causes, conflicts and solutions, faith and extremism, winners and losers and, finally, the general section titled «A Complex World.» All proceeds of the exhibition go to the Praksis NGO that arranges humanitarian and medical action programs. The main difference between photojournalism and artistic photography is that the former deals with images that capture actual events for news stories. Explanatory captions are necessary to place them in their historical and geographical context. Exhibition curator Vangelis Ioakeimidis decided to separate the images from their captions. So, at the beginning of the exhibition he placed photographs from all five sections without any captions while after seeing the images visitors can look up each photograph’s details on 10 computers. The exhibition is accompanied by the screening of images and excerpts from the documentary series. The organizers want to motivate visitors to ponder over all the atrocities that take place across the world. They also contrast the photographs with the fleeting images we see on television, so as to highlight photography’s emotional gravity. Photographs still have the power to make audiences sensitive to understanding the world’s «multifaceted truth.» At the Museum of Cycladic Art (4 Neofytou Douka, Kolonaki, tel 210.722.8321-3) to March 1.
