Contemporary Greek Photography

Photography journal The Black Snapper is devoting a week on contemporary Greek photography (Sept. 4-9, 2009). "The Greek Week" is curated by Hercules Papaioannou, director of Thessaloniki's Museum of Photography, and includes the work of Yannis Kontos, Georgios Makkas, Yiorgis Yerolymbos, Stratos Kalafatis, Christina Kalbari, Athena Chroni and Victor Cohen. The series has not yet ran it's course, but I hope people follow it (I read about it in Kathimerini). The Black Snapper is a Dutch journal launched this last August, seeking to create an on-line community devoted to international photography.

Kalafatis' "Redefining Thessaloniki: Work in Progress" is the series that caught my attention, especially slides 11 and 12. Reading a little bit more about Kalafatis' biography, I realized that I have actually met the guy in Philadelphia, out of all places. Kalafatis was as student at the Philadelphia Art Institute (1991-1993) at the same time I was in architecture school. The Greek graduate student circle of Philadelphia was quite tight, coalescing around Lorie Mark's infamous cafe Makam's Kitchen (and the bar Doobie's). Is our world really that small? Did the internet shrink it? From a Greek newspaper review, I found myself on a Dutch photography magazine, transported to Thessaloniki, only to learn that the featured photographer is someone that I met in Philadelphia almost 15 years ago.