FIELD NOTES 049
32 pp / 190 x 230mm
Staple Bound
Fedrigoni paper
First edition of 100
FN049
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Sunny Days/ A true story is a series that explores an abandoned road which once was a major arterial road through Northern Greece. I have been travelling back and forth to capture the remains of the route that was taking me to the sea, when I was a kid. The landmarks of my early summer days in the family car have long been neglected and left to the whims of time and nature, leaving houses and objects in decay. The construction of the new highway which runs parallel to the old one transforms the landscape. The places I remember are now covered in a thick layer of dust.
Carrying a heavy plate large-format camera, I started shaping my own personal story in a deliberately composed style. Along the way, I have photographed dystopian spaces, where the weight of the recent past is manifested, and I have selected artifacts that are part of an uncanny and inscrutable world. I was fascinated by the objects scattered all around and I captured them on a stand, as important findings or museum exhibits.
On my journeys I met people who have chosen to retreat from society and live off the grid in this liminal area. Using a white backdrop fabric, I photographed them as lead actors of the narrative. These hermits, burn-outs, runaways, horse whisperers, artists live their own self-contained version of happiness in farms, warehouses, cars. I reflected on the ways their daily reality is affected by local development schemes and the implications for the shaping of the landscape. The constraining policies of exclusion create repeated limits and produce installations of a new type of architecture arrangements.
Such “non-spaces” grow, adapt and are constantly reinvented, outside of the common, predictable world. People leave traces at these locations that become inscribed as relics of their time. The objects - discarded as trash or preserved as memorabilia - tell stories of identity and loss, pose new questions while affirming old certainties. It is a parallel reality with its own ethos and history that cannot exist apart from the mainstream reality. They remain inextricably bound up, as two sides of the same coin. This project wishes to open the door into the hidden reality that stands in plain sight or in other words, unfold “a Faraway Nearby”.
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FIELD NOTES is a series of affordable zines showcasing photography projects which explore our relationship with 'place'.