Photobook

50X

In the summer of 2021, I experienced the unexpected loss of a close friend.

Retreating for a few days to the southwestern coast of Athens, a place imbued with cherished memories, I found myself grappling with the dual feelings of longing for fun and relaxation, and having to come to terms with the finality of loss.

In the liminal space between memory and reality, I embarked on a photographic journey, capturing my idyllic surroundings using a digital cell-phone camera set to shoot at its extrememost, 50X zoom level: by definition a subjective measure of magnification, mirroring the subjective prism through which we experience those few moments in life when both time and space appear to dissolve. “How many pixels make a memory?”

This process of photographing became a spontaneous ritual, a fusion of tangible reality and imaginative projection. The resulting imagery presents a fluid, distorted tableau of impressions, nightmarish and dreamlike in equal measure, dynamic in nature but culminating in a profound sense of spiritual stillness.

This collection forms part of an ongoing exploration into the conceptual realms of the “Pleasure Garden” and the “Ghost City”. Both are conceived as metaphorical landscapes overlaid upon the physical spaces that we occupy, creating a symbiotic interaction where each influences and amplifies the other.

séance press editions, Athens, 2023