These photographs, under the title ‘Souvenirs’, describe a highly conservative Greek reality, which claims that the adhesion to an unskilled reproduction of ancient symbols along with the adoption of false mimic images of the Western civilization, add to the self-sufficiency and the prestige that it seems to seek. Throughout these reconstructions which mime ancient monuments and statues, one can witness the marching of representations of popular emblems, as well as symbols that, due to the recent political developments regarding the name of North Macedonia., became objects of quarrel. In these images, surrounded by square frames and despite their strictness, one can witness the playful, even ironic, mood of the photographer. The invocation of the past, the oblique westward gaze and the emphasis on the religious element are the triptych, which runs a large part of the disoriented Greek society. The hyperbole in their use, certainly invokes beliefs and arbitrary, often contradictory, adopted identities. Everything fits but nothing matches. This series reaches the lines of political photography as it records and gleans that which longs to be, through the use of symbols, the public image of the modern Greek and how he coexists with the public space. It is the image that he, himself constructs by using old and light-reflecting stereotypes which he estimates that they emulate the splendor of a long-gone civilization as a deficiency for the creation of a new one.
Nikos Priporas is a photographer born in 1984 in Thessaloniki, Greece. He studied graphic design and visual communication, European Culture studies in H.O.U and photography in ESP Thessaloniki, as a scholar. He has attended theory and history seminars on photography with Paris Petridis at MOMus. His work has been featured in online and printed media as well as in group exhibitions in Greece and abroad, most recently at the Athens Photography Festival 2019 in the Greek Young Photographers section and at Photometria International Festival 2020 at the city of Ioannina.
© text and pictures by Nikos Priporas
