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Urban architecture and industrial landscapes seem to be lit with life through the lens of the internationally acclaimed visual photographer Christophoros Doulgeris

Christophoros Doulgeris

Industrial Landscapes

Text: Eva Kallini | photos: Christophoros Doulgeris' archive

He spent his childhood years, up to the age of 12 in his native Serres. In the end of the 1980s, his family moved to West Germany, triggering an explosion of ideas and experiences that fueled his emotional world as a child. As he recounts, it was during his sojourn in Germany that he shaped his artistic identify, receiving powerful artistic influences. Returning to Greece, he studied Sociology at the University of Crete and Photography at the Camberwell College of Arts, in London. He currently lives and works between Athens and Düsseldorf, a city that became his “artistic sanctuary”.

Christophoros Doulgeris’ work focuses on magical realism, by capturing details and aspects of abstract and urban architecture, as well as familiar portraits linked to his daily entourage. The notions of locus and identity are recurring elements in his work. Doulgeris made his debut in Germany’s art scene in 2017, alongside German painter Konrad Klapheck and Dutch sculptor Willem Harbers, through the exhibition “The secret life of the machines”, hosted in the art venue Kunstraum Descartes, and curated by Gérard Goodrow.

Ever since his childhood, he was fascinated by the freedom of expression offered by the lens. Photography provided him from an early age the chance to express himself artistically, relying solely on his camera and the use of light. “That’s how I first experimented in my room, unaware that I was going down a path, from which I would steer away for the rest of my life”, he nostalgically recalls, before adding: “Photography helped me to get by the rough moments of my adolescence. It is a means of expression that is subject to transformations, giving you the chance to craft a visual world built on direct stimuli. It takes you over and triggers pleasing feelings in a personal level. I would go as far to say that photography is the ideal and much-needed art remedy for our soul, which takes a serious pounding from all sides these days.

 
As a photographer, he is clearly drawn to architecture and, by extension, to industrial photography, a kind of photography “that aspires to embed, to a smaller or greater extent, elements deriving from sculpture and installation.” Among others, Doulgeris’ major influences can be traced in the Düsseldorf School of Photography and the work of Greek architecture Aris Konstantinids. The latter’s ideas and philosophy on the function of spaces and the traditional folk architecture served as the stepping-stone of the philosophical bedrock underneath Doulgeris’ photographic glance.

 

He has participated in more than fifty exhibitions hosted in museums and galleries both in Greece and abroad, such as the Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation in Athens, Le Journal de la Triennale#3 in Paris, Linshui Photography Festival in China, the State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, the Modern Art Museum in Rethymno, Santorini Arts Factory, IFA Donopoulos Gallery in Thessaloniki and the Municipal Art Gallery of Chania, Crete.

“The secret life of the machines exhibition” and project room “Descartes” in Düsseldorf, both held in 2017, have been the benchmarks of his career, whereas the sculptural take on his photographs by the perceptive curator Gérard Goodrow gave a boost to the photographic documentation of his thinking, paving the way for his new successful project “T-FACTORY”, in which Doulgeris photographed the Industrial Tomato Museum “D. Nomikos”, in Santorini.
His photographic tribute “In the making”, a project that kicked off in early 2017, is currently showcased at the Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation. “I had the chance of being assigned to record a part of the Foundation’s construction, in Athens. Even though it started out as a simple recording, it gradually evolved into something bigger, transforming into an extensive photographic tribute, thanks to the co-curation and encouragement of Kyriakos Koutsomallis, the Foundation’s director.”

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christophorosdoulgeris.com

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www.goulandris.gr

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