The magazine of the photo-essay
June 2018 issue
Perpetual Motif
“A free, really high quality photo-essay magazine.  Fabulous!” Stephen Fry. British actor, writer and film maker
by George Vogiatzakis
It's not easy for me to talk about my pictures. And while the answer to the question "why do I take photos" might look easy and simple, the more I delve into my work trying to find some unequivocal messages, the more I realize that I haven't got any convincing answers to the questions I have put.    "Why do I insist, come back again and again, and utilize some specific motif to develop compositions?", "why do I take pictures mainly at night and why do I choose low resolution in my pictures?", "why am I so frequently attracted by the weird and how does this relate to my otherwise normal life?", "how is a trivial aspect of reality transformed into something more meaningful, playing a leading role in the world of photography?", "why do I ostensibly avoid the actual presence of humans, trying to make it apparent through its absence?", "why do posters showing people in the streets and statues fascinate me and pull me closer to them so that I can set them up in a tender but at the same time upsetting manner?" "Is the picture itself that touches me or a vague remembrance thereof when I don't look at it?", "the brief iewing time that I devote to it, is it to protect it, to avoid a dialogue with it, or to keep the sensation that it leaves behind inside me rightfully depicted in the same time that is more or less needed to have iits trace marked by the camera sensor?"... As if there is an internal resistance to hold back the answers for fear that decodification will ruin the "magic". Or, practically, to push me into a conscious mechanism of production of identical (decodofied) pictures, which will look like mere copies without any authenticity or soul. A vicious circle. A perpetual motif, whose beginning may be in the photo shooting, in the previous unanswered question that I had raised or in the phrasing of the question itself.  A paradoxical, a tormenting process. Which I however somehow enjoy. Because - coming back to the initial question "why do I take photos" - I can now give a more substantive answer: because I long for that surprise that I will feel when, once again, even only once, reality will reappear before my eyes transformed, different, mysterious and unpredictable.
Athens. A tree in front of a wall.
Athens. Cyclist.
Athens. Foot in a showcase.
Athens. Fur coat in a showcase.
Athens. Home facade.
Athens. Man on Poster.
Athens. Showcase decoration.
Athens. Tree shadow.
Athens. Woman on poster.
Athens. Nude.
Budapest. Statue.
Budapest. Poster.
Budapest. Street.
Budapest. Torn poster.
Ikaria. Branches.
Peloponnese cafe.
Prague. Steps.
Prague. Woman on the street.
Rome. Street.
Thessaloniki. Wall.
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