For the 31st consecutive year, the Athens Photo Festival brings together the works of local and international photographers, during an almost two month long series of events and exhibitions.
The festival aims to support aspiring photographers through multiple learning opportunities including the talent lab, where 15 artists have been chosen for intensive guidance, as well as open talks with established photographers and portfolio reviews, where anyone has the opportunity to get constructive criticism on their work from internationally acclaimed experts.
For the main exhibition, located at the Benaki Museum’s Pireos Street Annexe, over a hundred artworks have been selected (following an open call for submissions). It features photos from emerging as well as established photographers from 32 countries. It also includes multimedia projects and photo books.
Find some of our favorite photographs from the exhibition below.
Leonard Suryajaya (ID)
Bunda
Often representing the particularity of his upbringing as an Indonesian citizen of Chinese descent, Suryajaya uses photography to test the boundaries of intimacy, community, and family.
Petros Efstathiadis (GR)
Gold rush
Inspired by the new gas pipeline running through his home village of Liparo, Greece, Efstathiadis created large sculpturesin the village resembling buildings and machines from the time of the Californian gold rush.
Sanne De Wilde (BE)
The Island of the Colorblind
De Wilde portrays an island in the Pacific Ocean whose inhabitants – descendants of a late eighteenth century king with achromatopsia, all see the world in black and white.
Charlotte Mano (FR)
Blind visions
Having realized, through her work, that she didn’t actually know the people closest to her, Mano’s photos of her own family makes them look like ghosts, silent and anonymous.
Mari Masouridou (GR)
The Nameless Dread
Masouridou uses photographs as visual representation and projections of fears and the negative feelings she had as a child.
Marco Marzocchi (IT)
Oyster
Marzocchi’s visual diary “Oyster” – created as a way to understand his absent parents, and to forgive and let go of a dysfunctional childhood – consists of archival and original imagery.
Viacheslav Poliakov (UA)
Lviv–God’s Will
Photographing objects in the urban environment that he sees as having been “formed by accidental interaction of unrelated people”, or by God’s will, he doesn’t interfere with his objects, but simply removes the backgrounds.
Vanja Bucan (SI)
Sequences of Truth and Deception
Portraying the human relationship to nature, Bucan’s images deal with the notion that humans possess conditional love towards nature, loving it’s beauty but also detaching ourselves from it, and ignoring our destruction of it.
Jonny Briggs (GB)
Familiar Familial
Using staged installations, Briggs attempts to recapture his own childhood through adult eyes, acknowledging the “constructed reality of the family”.
Diego Moreno (MX)
Huésped (Guest)
Using photography to challenge his own culture and the domestic violence he grew up with, Moreno’s images explore subjects such as body, affection, desire, contact, and bonds.
Harit Shrikhao (TH)
Trial and Error
Inspired by fetish fantasies, Hindu religious allegories and classic Thai imagery, Shrikhao also uses photography to comment on the sacred status of the monarchy in his homeland.
