⁰¹ Yannis Theodoropoulos, Greenhouse series, 1999, 50 × 75 cm
⁰² Yannis Theodoropoulos, Greenhouse series, 1999, 120 × 150 cm
⁰³ Yannis Theodoropoulos, Untitled, 2007, inkjet print on fine art paper, 60 × 48.7 cm
⁰⁴ Yannis Theodoropoulos, Untitled, 2011, inkjet print on fine art paper, 50 × 33.4 cm
⁰⁵ Yannis Theodoropoulos, Untitled, 2011, inkjet print on fine art paper, 50 × 33.4 cm
⁰⁶ Yannis Theodoropoulos, Untitled, 2007, inkjet print on fine art paper, 60 × 48.7 cm
⁰⁷ Yannis Theodoropoulos, Untitled, 2007, inkjet print on fine art paper, 60 × 48.7 cm
⁰⁸ Yannis Theodoropoulos, Untitled, 2007, inkjet print on fine art paper, 60 × 48.7 cm
⁰⁹ Yannis Theodoropoulos, Untitled, 2007, inkjet print on fine art paper, 60 × 48.7 cm

This interview, conducted in September 2008, appears here on the occasion of Yiannis Theodoropoulos solo show at Alpha Delta Gallery, Athens (18 May – 16 July 2011). It is included in the forthcoming book 10 Aspects of Hellenic photography (edited by Vangelis Ioakimidis) published by the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography and Agra Editions, Athens. The catalogue also includes interviews between Marinos and the other nine photographers (Christina Dimitriadis, Stratos Kalafatis, Panos Kokkinias, Yiorgos Kordakis, Evangelia Kranioti, Dimitra Lazaridou, Nikos Markou, Paris Petridis, Yiorgis Yerolymbos).


Christopher Marinos: Perhaps the most clichéd phrase that I have ever read for (someone’s involvement with) photography is that it is a kind of ‘sharing experience’. What, exactly, is it for you?

Yiannis Theodoropoulos: First of all, photography is a construction. Usually, the photographer handles one or many parts of reality or parts drawn from pre-existing — archival or created — material. I think that contemporary photography, having passed through various phases, with central axis being, among others, the Düsseldorf School, the staged documentary (e.g. Jeff Wall) and the photography of constructed models (e.g. James Casebere), is now going through a ‘small crisis’ of identity. And, by saying a ‘small crisis’ I am referring to what a photograph can tell us today. Of course, it will always be a conceptual tool that records — but what interests me is what an artist that uses this medium can say to us today. Certainly, it is not an exchange of experiences! I would say that photography — at least, as I see it — if one excludes the purely documentary archival aspect, is the constant search for a body language that flirts with sculpture, creating utopian micro-universes that are familiar and at the same time, unfamiliar.

CM: The way you put it, such a quest eventually leads to the disappearance of photography, to its transformation into something else. On the other hand, photographing those personal micro-universes, basically the space in which you live and the objects that surround you everyday, you compose a self-portrait. Does this method contribute to a kind of catharsis? It seems as though you want to exorcise something.

YT: I think you said it very well: if something interests me in this aspect of my work — I mean the photographs that have been taken exclusively in family surroundings — it is the metamorphosis, in spite of the fact that this may sound rather heavy. My fixation with the natural landscape makes me a traveler in my own home, rediscovering natural landscapes in certain corners, filtering them perhaps unconsciously through fixations, fears, terrors, lost paradises of the past and the present. I don’t hide the fact that sometimes I intervene in the placement of objects. In spite of that, I wouldn’t call it ‘staged photography’ — it is only my death that I could stage. I could call it ‘detached experiential sculpture’.

CM: Which, however, is strongly existential. You walk a tightrope between the crisis in photography and the artist’s identity crisis. Or, to put it another way, you try to comment on the impasses of the medium, flirting at the same time with the idea of failure.

YT: The idea of failure is always on my mind — but, by insisting on matters of identity, the artist can nourish the medium with new, raw material. In fact, my photographs are preoccupied with existential elements. But at the same time, they explore the geography of the space, and that is something that concerns us all. What I want to say is that my images are conceptually personal, but they can also be anyone’s. I don’t hide the fact that there is always a ‘Düsseldorfian’ aspect in my work. But I don’t stay there; I try to see where it will go.

CM: Aren’t you interested in photographing shopping malls such as The Mall, which happens to be near your home? Doesn’t it present you with a challenge?

YT: Look, we Greek photographers have a small problem: Whatever we photograph has already be photographed by many others before us. After Andreas Gursky, it is difficult for someone to photograph mass spaces and especially The Mall. You’re aware of the purely documentary aspect of my work, which perhaps I have neglected a little, but it concerns buildings that have a more local character.

CM: How does this documentary side of your work function? You once said that the different, strange buildings that you photograph in your travels around Athens are ’interesting proposals’. In other words, you don’t try to belittle something.

YT: Basically, I don’t consider myself an urbanite that walks around photographing familiar modern Greek architecture with an icy, critical eye. A sterile, urban architecture without the element of surprise, where everything moves smoothly and painlessly, would be terribly boring to me. Improvisation and standardisation often create extremely interesting, practical results that are far from boring, and which many western sculptors would envy. The problem is that there are no foundations so that this creativity can be placed in some kind of context. And so, to the intellectual of the city, the sight of all those cultural forms provokes a disparaging smile. I feel that a part of myself is a part of those constructions, and a part of my video Fortunately, I went Crazy, 2006. The second part, however, smiles, not with Kafasis the singer, but with the guy who is dancing.

CM: Did the same happen with the abandoned greenhouses and mobile homes? Did you identify with them?

YT: You can see that if you neglect a controlled environment for a while, nature takes over. Do I identify myself with that? Perhaps Marquis has the answer. As for the mobile homes, I have friends who live in them during the summer. They are good kids. In fact, my best friend wants to build a stone house there. Of course, he hasn’t a penny, but that isn’t enough of a justification for an unauthorised mobile home to be there.

CM: And, are your photographs also ‘arbitrary’?

YT: That’s an interesting question! Lately, I’ve stopped concerning myself with recording all those constructions of daily life. I want to redefine my relationship with them, but I can’t stop loving those images, even as simple records. I feel as if I am in limbo in relation to that unfinished work of mine and morally there is the element of the arbitrary. ‘Without limits’, I would say, to recall the Alpha Station project of 2003.

CM: What are you involved with now? And what course would you want your work to take from now on?

YT: I am continuing with the private ‘landscapes’ and I must say, I am rather pleased by some of the images. And I don’t plan to have my next solo show in six years — I left it for too long, the last time. I plan to start again with the buildings, but I would like to get away from pure documentation and filter them with feeling. I want to make a few night images, always in the context of social commentary, self-sarcasm, poetry, and humour. I also want to continue the videos with myself as protagonist and at the same time to continue with the dance theater group. And as for the course that I would like my work to take? It doesn’t always depend on me; of course, I am open to suggestions.

CM: Are you thinking of abandoning photography?

YT: To tell the truth, I have thought about it often. But I will always return to the ‘image’, flirting with my limits, even if I don’t receive the acceptance that I would expect.

CM: Would you live with another artist?

YT: Your question is dead on and timely. You know, I’ve thought about it recently but I can’t stand being either by myself or with others for a long stretch of time. And that’s a problem. Nevertheless, I’m open to the idea.

CM: What do you consider to be the ‘Evil Genius’ of Greek photography?

YT: I think it’s that some photographers lack an education in the arts.

CM: Is that why there exits an aesthetic homogeneity?

YT: Look, important steps have been taken in the last few years and continue to be taken by some people in Thessaloniki, others in Athens, by the School of Fine Arts. But, the average art lover and photographers don’t realise that photography did not descend onto the art world with a parachute. And let’s not forget that my presence in the field is due, to a large degree, to the fact that some galleries, in the nineties, began to show photographs.