PHotoEspaña vergibt den diesjährigen Descubrimientos PHE15 Award an Yannis Karpouzis für seine Serie 'The Parallel Crisis'. Die fortlaufende Bilderreihe dokumentiert die sozio-ökonomische Entwicklung in seiner Heimat Griechenland, ein irritierendes Portrait der Hauptstadt Athen, in der seit dem Beginn der Krise Zeit und Leben stillzustehen scheinen. Und wie Karpouzis ausführlich erklärt, ist die Zeit ein allumfassender Faktor: tote Zeit, gestohlene Zeit, bereits verbrauchte Zeit, - fotografisch eingefrorene Zeit. Im Zuge der Auszeichnung wird das Werk auf der PHotoEspaña 2016 in einer Solo-Ausstellung zu sehen sein.
"It is said that photography happens to be the most naïve of all media because of its intention, its ability to immobilize time. That is why photographs are usually beautiful but sad. The only time that the camera can reproduce is dead time, time already spent. In the last five years, Athens has dramatically changed; the whole city is transformed into a negative plateau, immobilized in time. The flow of life has changed for its citizens. Their time is not their own, it is a stolen and already used time, reminiscent of the already spent time of photography. Photography was invented in the 20th century to depict the huge flow of information that started to define metropolitan modern life. Today the media are much more detailed and complex in depiction of the topography of life. Nevertheless, photography retains as privilege its biggest disadvantage: Immobilized and spent photographic time is the most suitable canvas to upload our frozen moments, the no-way transits, the junkyards behind our houses, all the people waiting silently to sell their replacements. Photography reaches its poetic destination when it narrates the tale of the imprisoned, of those men whose time was spent the immobilized men. Let´s remember Samuel Becketts character Winnie living with half of her body inside the ground. Continuing nevertheless to move and live," so Yannis Karpouzis.
Und im Interview für GoSee verriet er uns, wie es mit dem Projekt weiter geht: "The series “Parallel Crisis” needs more time (and films) in order to be completed and be printed as a photographic book. Even now I see so many uneasy situations that I want to depict. By next June, when is the exhibition to Madrid, I will summarize a 6 years work in this Project. As it is seen in my pictures, the project is not seeking to capture a type of financial crisis but mainly a crisis of time, both personal and collective. I believe that the people who try to construct new ways of narration were always in a kind of crisis. The true way to get out of it is to continue working on your creations. The Charles Baudelaire’s poem “Albatross” focuses on this.
Although, the financial crisis is very real and very generalized in the major percentage of the population. In my opinion, this can only be solved if both the Greek and the other European people struggle against the neoliberal attack that takes place upon our rights, our liberties, our hopes.
I am currently working on two projects, “The parallel crisis” and “Polar Dimensions” which I will continue, all the next year, up to the Photoespagna 2016 exhibition. You can see my second project, which is a reconstruction of an unfinished Danish film from the 70’s in my personal site."
Ausgewählt wurde der Fotograf von einer Jury bestehend aus den Foto-Experten Lorenza Bravetta (Centro Italiano per la Camera Photography Turin), Gilles Favier (ImageSingulières, Sète) und Markus Hartmann (freier Kurator, Stuttgart). Weitere Infos findet Ihr auf phe.es.