The practice of photography as an attempt to capture Greece in motion.
Giannis Manolis
An endless photo wandering
Text: Vassilis Servetas
The first thing one comes across while browsing the photo book The Hunter, The Woman & The Hut by Giannis Manolis, released by the Berlin-based The Velvet Cell independent publishing house, is a T.S. Eliot quote: “We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive when we started and know the place for the first time.” Right from the very start it becomes crystal-clear that the notion of exploring lies at the very core of Giannis’ artistic restlessness. Over the last decade, he hops onto the car every chance he gets, with the company of a good friend and associate, to capture life in the peri-urban environment and, as if a lyric from the famous Greek electronic music band Stereo Nova, “swirls around like a molecule of a great wandering.”
A graduate of the Stereosis School of Photography before taking on the role of the teacher, Giannis has already four solo photo exhibitions under his belt, one of which within the framework of the 2018 Photobiennale. He fell under the spell of analog photography and the classic 35mm film in the brink of adulthood, frantically recording his everyday life against a black-and-white backdrop. He soon realized that his narrative was calling for color saturation, and moved on to color film. Making a brief stop at the medium format and the legendary Hasselblad camera (one of his most recognizable photos was taken using this camera), he found the square frame way too limiting. The only path left to follow was no other than the – mesmerizing for some, obsolete for others – large format: the camera equipped with a 10×12.5 cm film plaque, offering a far superior resolution than any contemporary digital camera.
“In all honesty, film is what made me feel like a true photographer,” points out Giannis Manolis. “I feel it’s responsible for the development of my personal language as a photographer. Film urges you to aesthetically and conceptually contemplate on your images from the very first second. It’s important that you lack the power to expressly control the final outcome. This way, you are forced to detach yourself emotionally from any given photo.” In addition to the benefit of high definition, Giannis chooses to foreground the tangible aspect of film. “Film is a very important instrument to me, as it preserves its materiality amidst a period that every form of information tends to come in digital form.” In his latest photo project he switched to digital photography, but does not rule out the possibility of a return to analog film. “Alec Soth, Magnum’s renowned photographer, once said that every photo project comes with different narrative needs expressed through a different set of practical components, in accordance to the means used each time. These words sum up my stance as a photographer.”
During the last couple of years, Giannis Manolis has embarked on a new theme project titled Mt. Olympus (The Ballad of the sleeping Gods), focused on the wider region of Mount Olympus. No surprise therefore, to hear him say that mythology attracted his interest ever since a child. “I was swept by an overwhelming curiosity to explore all mythological tales. These heroes had always been covered with the veil of an undefined adventure, which triggered my imagination. Even though none of my photo projects so far has revolved around a more personal and emotional revelation of my world, I always get the feeling that my starting-off point is a deep inner need,” shares Giannis Manolis.
“My goal in this project, as in most of my endeavors, is to create a series of images open to interpretation. Not by merely documenting the in situ facts and events, but through the building of an imaginary world, on the fringes of the supernatural and the otherworldly. To achieve that, I resort to the use of lighting techniques and symbolisms, without completely detaching myself from the spatial reality.” Giannis Manolis makes sure to establish contact with the locals and photograph them. In addition, he encompasses constructions, architectural works and details of the landscape in his narrative: “All these features are the fragments of the story I’m unraveling, but also the key pillars of my personal language as a photographer. This way, I’m trying to create a particular ambiance and gear the viewer to tiptoe between the tangible and the eerie.” This recording-oriented and documentary-like approach is what anchors Manolis’ work to the solid ground of reality.
In all honesty, film is what made me feel like a true photographer. I feel it’s responsible for the development of my personal language as a photographer. Film urges you to aesthetically and conceptually contemplate on your images from the very first second. It’s important that you lack the power to expressly control the final outcome. This way, you are forced to detach yourself emotionally from any given photo.
In his photo expeditions in the outskirts of the highest mountain of Greece, Giannis Manolis has met people of various religious beliefs. “I have met people who believe in the divine powers of the mountain and travelled from the other end of the world to visit it, but also people who were just born or ended up there. Nevertheless, this photo exploration does not center on a realistic documentation of the worshiping practice of any religion.” In the past, Manolis had delved more into the issue of faith, “a pivotal part of Greek reality” as he mentions. Having encompassed these images in the portrait of a post-financial crisis Greece, he depicted a country in transition, caught in a state of limbo.
When asked about his artistic roots and the archetypal images inscribed in his memory, he provides a highly interesting answer. “I can recall a vivid childhood memory. I was watching TV at home in the evening, mystified by some black-and-white figures moving around and making metallic sounds. I was overcome with desire to watch the rest of the film, even though I was kind of scared, being a child. Later on I was told that I had watched some scenes of Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece The Birds (1963). Let me make it clear that I don’t claim this to be a mind-changing experience, nor do I believe that it led me to get involved with photography. The only conclusion I have drawn is that the “quality cinema” has you glued to your seat, regardless of your age. The experience of cinema is far more important than any pompous or hard-to-reach concepts we employ to describe it.”
As one of his major cinema influences he sites David Lynch, who “builds his narrative in a photographic display manner”, but also Yorgos Lanthimos for the scenery he weaves in all of his films. He singles out The Lobster (2015), as “within no more than ten minutes Lanthimos has already convinced me that this outrageous world he has crafted has a lot in common with the world I’m living in.” He goes on to mention Amores perros (2000) by Alejandro González Iñárritu, “a punch in the guts that does not wear out even after the film has ended, as it reminds us that ‘the things we’ve lost on the way are too what we’re made of’”, he stresses.
“Αs a photographer I am fond of many different styles, but my most noteworthy sources of influence are Alec Soth, Joel Sternfeld and Vanessa Winship. I love the sequence of their images, the way they
build their narrative. Their frames ooze a sense of austerity, but at the same they are in search of this tiny and decisive detail that will trigger a surprise within the viewer, not through fancy elements striving to make an impression, but rather through semantic references, gestures and details.” Giannis Manolis also makes mention to Kosmas Pavlidis, an outstanding contemporary Greek photographer, his former teacher at the Stereosis School of Photography, and a dear friend of his, as a person who deeply affected him and fueled him with motivation.
As for his future plans, the only thing he knows for sure is that they’ll be full of journeys and expeditions. “I don’t enjoy not having a clue whatsoever as to what will happen next. I have conducted a small-scale research on the exile islands of Greece. I wish to tell their stories through a juxtaposition of archival footage and contemporary images. A follow-up idea is a series of images from the islands of the Greek-Turkish border line. I may very well end up crossing to the other side to photograph this aquatic world as the indiscernible threshold between two cultures.” According to Giannis Manolis, it’s all a matter of perspective. “We select to view borders as a separation line and not as a pathway for bringing people and cultures together.” This great photo adventure, which has become after all these years a way of life for Giannis Manolis, consolidates his initial assumption: wandering is the shortest way to self-knowledge.
CV
Giannis Manolis was born in Thessaloniki in 1995. In 2016 he graduated from the Metropolitan College of Thessaloniki School of Architecture BA (Hons), RIBA I, and went on to attend photo
seminars at the Stereosis School of Photography. He has curated a series of individual and collective exhibitions, having hosted four solo exhibitions. His work has been showcased in numerous collective exhibitions, such as the 2018 and the 2022 Athens Photo Festival, as well as in prestigious venues such as MOMus-Thessaloniki Photography Museum and the Benaki Museum. In 2018 he was selected among 277 photographers for the one out of the two solo exhibitions held by the Thessaloniki Photography Museum within the framework of the 2018 Photobiennale. His work has been included in the touring collective exhibition by Fotofilmic (San Francisco, Vancouver, Seoul) in 2019. In 2002 his debut photo book The Hunter, The Woman & The Hut was released by the Berlin-based publishing house The Velvet Cell.
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