On the way to Assignment 5

For the past 5 weeks I have been working with various ideas. I believe that it would be interesting to present you some of them here.

My initial idea was that it would be easy for me to present my life on the island where I live. So I started taking photos, having a draft plan on the images I wanted to create. The project was labelled “The way we live“. We are very proud of our garden, we live in a very dry area and rain is quite rare. To maintain a garden is not easy but it was our dream to create a small paradise and we have succeeded it. I am herein exhibiting some of photos I have taken:

While in progress, the project did not satisfy me. I wanted to present something else for the final assignment of this course. When I upload my images I can tell my development & growth made during the past months, this is more apparent when I receive prints. The photos didn’t seem harmonious. I kept listening for inner voices, and I have continued the creative journey.

Another easy option was to take photos of my boy. He is now almost 11 years old and I have named this project “Little Prince” and for some time I have been following him with my lens creating various portraits. Being very busy with work, travelling and taking photos for the exercises of this course, during the past months I have neglected to photograph him. He is now not so eager to be photographed and I had to be patient with him:

No matter, how cherished, precious and loved the subject is and how I liked the process of photographing my son, again the result didn’t satisfied me. There was inside me another voice that wanted to be heard and so I have continued with another piece of research.

This project is called for “For sale or for rent“. I wanted to move out of my confort zone, beyond my bubble and show my “audience” of depiction of the reality I live in my country Greece because of the economic crisis. Thousands of shops have been closed and hundreds of properties are for sale. The yellow sing you will see in the photos below ΕΝΟΙΚΙΑΖΕΤΑΙ means FOR RENT. This is everywhere you go, in some cases the yellow has faced and has become cream but the letters are there along with all the information, and so is the crisis no matter what the politicians promise to the people…

This can be a project in process, I am thinking about it. Yet, for the time being I have given it up because the photos didn’t meet my expectations. But by then my intention was clear, I would photograph a face of the crisis in Greece working on a more emotional level.