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Photographic Symphony of a City
or a subjective take on reality
A book of photographs dedicated to a city pre-empts questions as to its identity. What is more, there are many readers who, before even opening it, hasten to attach to the book an identity that they themselves would wish or expect from it. So, apart from questions, a city-book also raises hopes and conceals surprises.
What most people expect is as faithful a recording of the form and life of the city as is possible, a kind of documentation. The kind of photographs that they believe will act as substitutes for the eyes of the visitor. Others prefer a kind of beautified take on the city, so that the book would make the ideal gift for a foreign visitor, a comforting self-deception about their place of sojourn. Their view of what are "good" photographs (those that "should" be included in the book) is slanted towards the aesthetic of the contemporary postcard, the kind that isolates details, heightens colours and uses idealization as a supposed descriptive tool. Old black and white postcards at least had the virtue of being informative.
The above-mentioned approaches which, nevertheless, find many and useful commercial applications, make the error of adhering to an established formula, which we have come to call a "cliché". As regards a photographic album of a city, the clichés are those of objectivity and of beauty. However, this type of formulization becomes by definition a betrayal, as much of the objective truth, as of beauty itself. Whether or not we see these as either unavoidable or nonexistent, it is always necessary that they be accompanied both by doubt and by honesty. A photographer who deals in clichés does not investigate. He merely creates the images of prearranged shots. The function of the photographic image that is based on subjective criteria of choice is infinitely more interesting. This is a photography that uses the most faithful recording possible in order to render the most personal photographic depiction possible. Here the photographer leaves the result open and is surprised when he deems that he has managed to convey even the smallest percentage of the ever-complicated truth or ever-subterranean beauty.
There are, moreover, smells and sounds, atmosphere and life in a city. These are practically impossible to convey in the arbitrary boundaries of the small parallelogram of a photograph. That which a viewer thinks he sees of a city is nothing more than a reference to his already predetermined opinion of it or else to the synoptic information of a caption. The latter is in fact what underlines the value of what are referred to as historic photographs and gives them the dimension of substantiating evidence, which undoubtedly adds to the charm with which truth and time hold us all in thrall.
The portrait of a city is no different from the portrait of a person. In a portrait, the process of photographing and the resulting photograph are not the tool and goal of an impossible, and finally unprofitable, "interpretation" of the personality of an individual. No portrait can contain the personality of its subject, nor can a series of images prescribe the breath and rhythm of a city. A portrait is nothing more than the mysterious meeting of a person's gaze with that of the photographer. The latter thus has the possibility of posing a few questions about the person who is looking at him. These questions, which would not have existed without the presence of the photographer, can never be answered. The interest of a photograph lies in the questions it suggests and not in the answers we think it is giving us.
It is not the ambition of this book to be an all-encompassing collection of Athenian images that covers most, or all, of the subject matter that makes up the image and life of the city. Indeed, despite being impossible, this would also be conceited, uncertain and ultimately devoid of all meaning. This book consists of an arbitrary and disjointed coexistence of some equally arbitrary and disjointed glances at our city. This approach gives equal import to the subject matter and to the photographer. Namely, it is a collection of personal and absolutely subjective views on the objective aspect of the city. The subjective distorts the objective and resurrects it as an altered or transcendental version of the real.
The idea for this collection of photographs started with the Benaki Museum's relationship to photography. This is a relationship that is becoming all the more significant, but which never ceases to seek out its true function. The initial historic and folkloric aims of the Museum led to a collection of photographs with an emphasis on their function as testimonials. This function began to be refined (without being diminished) by the addition of artistic selection criteria. This shift in direction led the Museum into gathering together photographs having the added criteria of being created by specific, well-known and accredited artists. Thus we have seen collections of the works of Nelly's, Papaioannou, Harisiadis and others finding a home in the Museum and been turned to advantage both scientifically and artistically. The Museum's shift in direction is especially significant both because it gives an aesthetic dimension and value to the testimonial function of photography, but also because the Museum itself lends status and organization to its artistic function. Finally, by commissioning contemporary photographers to produce photographic images, the Museum is fulfilling its function and purpose, by adding that one function which is perhaps the most significant, that of inspiring and motivating creative works. In other words, it no longer only collects existing works, classifies them and preserves them for future generations, but it, in itself, becomes the reason for the birth of its collections. Thus it no longer functions just as a space for collection and storage of various works, but also as a living organism involved in the production of works themselves.
The staff of the photographic section of the Museum, lead by Mrs. Fani Konstantinou, has not only embraced this shift in direction and its significance, but seem to enjoy the broadening of its role and to be attempting, calmly and with trust in time, a coupling and parallel meshing of the traditional, documentational function of the photographs it guards, restores and administrates, with that of this contemporary artistic dimension.
The idea which lead to the production of this book and the photographs that it contains relied on the collaboration between an organization such as "Photography Circle", who's primary aim is the creation of art photographs, and another organization, the Benaki Museum, who's secondary aim is the production of photographs. "Photography Circle" has a membership that includes many good, contemporary photographers amongst whom it spread the word and the ultimate objective, so as to initiate the creation of photographic images with the general subject matter as their specific content. However, it did not confine itself to members only. It also sought out other photographers and, finally, among those that present their work are several who are not members of the "Circle".
The general idea for the subject was Athens at the turn of the century, as a passerby would see it. In other words, we restricted the field to external spaces only. We did not, however, assign photographers specific sub-themes. They were allowed freedom in the choice of the specific aspect of the subject that interested them. The objectivity of the creative approach is better served if it starts with what is photographed rather than how it is photographed. Moreover, this city is their city. They live in it, they see it every day and they have the right to convey to us the details that make an impression on them. Since we must agree that photography deals only with detail, which leads us always indirectly (and with any luck transcendentally) to the whole.
My responsibility as curator was to choose the photographs. This always happened in collaboration (though not always in full agreement) with the photographers. My photographic preferences, as is inevitable, interfered with this process. I hope, however, that they do not impose too much of my own determinative signature on the works as a whole. When all is said and done, the works belong to the photographers and not to the curator. However, because my role as a theoretician and as a curator is less significant to that of teacher (or else I practise it less effectively), I take pleasure mainly in bringing the photography about, in following the photographers' course and finally, with my own last intervention, in making their photographic premises more lucid. In this instance, I "worked" with the photographers (at least most of them), following the course of their work and discussing their choices with them. The final selections reflect my relative preferences and express my absolute approbation. These choices could have been very different, but often the logic and layout of the book showed the way, so that we avoided overlap and ensured variety and the distinctiveness of the themes.
The final number of photographs by each photographer has clearly nothing to do with their merit or with their position within the community of art photographers. Moreover, a group artistic initiative can have nothing in common with an athletic competition. If the same quantitative weight is given to each section then the whole loses rhythm and unity. Each person's photographs were chosen based on their subject matter, the breadth of it, the number of images it proposed and the continuity the photographs could guarantee.
The photographs of the album (and the accompanying exhibition) will be presented free of charge by the photographers to the Museum, as an acknowledgment of the Benaki Museum's contribution to photography, and in the hope that its archives will hold more and more photographs with a individual artistic approach.
I would like to add, however, that during these preparations, I came upon two interesting discoveries. The first is that very few photographers of those I know in Athens (and after twenty years of teaching I know many) photograph their city. Of the thirty-four Greek photographers included in the book only five or six were already photographing Athens when the idea for the book was born. Despite my efforts to find other contemporary photographers that were photographing Athens (I asked teachers, theoreticians and journalists), few, very, very few came forward. And all this at a time when there is a trend among photographers towards photographing their own space (the town one lives in makes up the backdrop of one's life), and a trend away from the role of a neutral observer of an alien environment. The question remains, and is perhaps more significant in itself than any possible answer to it can be.
My second observation has to do with the almost homogenous direction taken by the works of all the photographers. Or rather, more accurately, there are two, often-overlapping directions. Athens is treated either with obvious humour or as a chaotic, third world city. However, it is true that after studying the photographs and in parallel observing the city I could not but agree. These two directions exist and perhaps they are the most justified directions to take. They surely are the most appealing. The personality of the city does not rest on its obviously present cosmopolitan aspects. These mostly reflect a provincialism and an imitation complex. The character of Athens is mostly to be found in the disorderly but at the same time tender and comical mixture of the village and the big city. That is where it can lay claim to its particular charm. Many subjects that would have all the better conveyed this character are missing from the book. They remain open for the photographers that follow, as long as they themselves perceive them and select them.
I would like this book to motivate both the reader and the photographers to really see their city and to see it personally. I would also like more photographers, both known and unknown, to set aside their personal ambitions and to go after an involvement in group works. The example of the participation of Bernard Plossu may inspire them. I do feel, however, that an album of this kind should be dedicated to those contemporary photographers who did not take part in the book, either because they didn't get their work in on time, or because they didn't hear of it, or because my bona fide criticism dismissed them. I apologize to them and I urge them to photograph these same subjects or others with an even greater dedication towards an even better result than that of the photographers included in this collection.
Finally, I would like to give heartfelt thanks to Mr. Angelos Delivorias, Mrs. Irene Geroulanou, Mrs. Fani Konstantinou, Mrs. Irene Boudouri and anyone else at the Benaki Museum who worked towards this photographic collection, because they made me believe that it is possible in our country to have a collaboration capable of producing work both of a very high standard and of high mutual respect. For me, this is one of the many contributions made by the Benaki Museum.
Platon Rivellis
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The Benaki Museum
Photographic Archive
The broadening of its aims
and the challenge
of contemporary photography
The Benaki Museum Photographic Archive was founded in 1973, to cover the need to preserve and to utilize our photographic heritage, at a time when it had not yet been considered worthy of special care. Its operation as an independent department confirms the distinctiveness of the museum organization which, thanks to its flexibility, is able to respond promptly to the demands of the cultural life of Greece and the challenges of the day.
In the course of its thirty-year existence, the department has frequently reviewed its policy and broadened its aims, adapted to the requirements of the material as well as to the new situation created in recent years as a result of the intense interest of both the state and private bodies in photographs old and modern. Primary criterion for forming the Archive's collections was the evidence of the photographic image. Pictures of monuments and works of art of the Byzantine Age and the Postbyzantine period, general or partial views of urban or rural settlements in Greek lands as well as scenes of traditional life were assembled, classified and documented, so providing students of Greek history and culture with a resource of precious visual information.
It was quickly realized, however, that the documentary evidence of the image could not remain the sole criterion for choosing photographs. The archives of Nelly's, Voula Papaioannou and Dimitris Charisiadis, significant representatives of Greek photography, stimulated the reassessment of the criteria for evaluating the material. Beyond the testimony of the photographic image, attention should turn to the creators themselves, to the singularity of their personal style, their contribution to the development of Greek photography, their concomitance with or distancing from international artistic currents. In parallel with the careful keeping of the historical photographic archives and the time-consuming process of documenting them, there emerged the obligation to present Greek photographers, by organizing exhibition and publishing albums, under the supervision of the Archive's curators or invited collaborators.
During the last decade (1990-2000), when the Benaki Museum was closed due to the enlargement of its premises and the reorganization of its holdings, the Photographic Archive was suffocating from lack of space. Even so, it never ceased being in fruitful communication with cultural foundations and bodies, representing Greece in international events and enriching its collections.
In the framework of the system of decentralization, according to which the new museum organization was articulated and resumed functioning in June 2000, it was considered imperative to re-house the Archive in a separate building (15 Philikis Etaireias Square). After necessary interventions and the installation of modern technological equipment, a space suitable for keeping the original material, a conservation laboratory for prints and negatives, a dark room, a library and a reading room, to serve those consulting its collections, were arranged.
The conditions were thus highly conducive to taking steps in new directions and implementing wider programmes. The idea of making an ‘overture' to contemporary photography, through thematic units appropriate to the Museum's cultural vision, had now ripened. The bold decision to commission works from young photographers would demolish the already breached boundaries between historical and modern photographic creation, between yesterday and today. It would also abolish the dubitable division between the photograph as a record and the photograph as a work of art - which had already happened in practice with the work of the earlier photographers - since each creator would have the possibility of investigating freely a given subject and of rendering it with his personal style.
Moreover, the benefit of this venture is twofold: young photographers are given the motive to work creatively and the satisfaction of presenting their work in an important cultural foundation of Greece, while the Photographic Archive will acquire a notable material that depicts a subject of specific interest and represents contemporary trends in Greek photography. The subject proposed to the young photographers was Athens in the late twentieth century, because the urban space of a contemporary metropolis is constantly changing and because the Athenian cityscape has remained largely unexploited photographically. Athens has not been loved by the camera, even though it attracted the pioneers of the new art in the early years after its invention.
The first foreign travellers-photographers reached Athens after a fatiguing journey, in order to climb up to the Acropolis and photograph its monuments, just as their first Greek colleagues did. In the early decades of the twentieth century the official face of the capital was added to the ancient monuments: the two central squares, Syntagma and Omonoia, the main thoroughfares and, primarily, the Athenian Trilogy (the Neoclassical buildings of the Academy, the University and the National Library, in Panepistimiou Street). Exceptions are the photographs of Fred Boissonnas, who captured a sample of city life, and of Nelly's, who, under the direction of the Athenian chronicler Dimitrios Kambouroglou, photographed the historical web, obedient to the tenets of pictorialism and with an obvious sense of nostalgia. Later, the photographers of the post-war decades (Spyros Meletzis, Kostas Balaphas, Voula Papaioannou, Dimitris Charisiadis) turned mainly to the countryside and agricultural life, following the trend of return to the purity of Nature that held sway after the mayhem of World War II. From the hints of city life that exist in Papaioannou's oeuvre, and Charisiadis's timid attempts to convey the essence of Athens in the 1950s, it was not until the last two decades of the twentieth century that Greek photographers began to become involved with interpreting the cityscape.
The Benaki Museum's proposal met with the enthusiastic response of our good friend Platon Rivellis, well known in photographic circles for his work as an artist, author and teacher. With his knowledge and experience he collaborated constructively with the young photographers who sped to give their own version of the space in which they live.
The harvest of their images offers aspects and prospects of polymorphous Athens, leaving leeway for many and different approaches, and inviting us to observe what we are passing by every day.
Phani Konstantinou
Curator of the Photographic Archive
Benaki Museum
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Books of Members 
