Background information
"A long time ago, before the euro and the Internet, the Greek islands were a popular destination for backpackers. The beaches were wide and unpopulated back then. People traveled by boats to big and small islands and celebrated the so-called 'island hopping'. Photographer Christina DIMITRIADIS took this act of wandering between islands as the most direct starting point for her photo series and the resulting photo book 'Island Hoping'. In doing so, her work represents a remapping outward and a reorientation inward amidst geopolitical storms. In the fall of 2015, the German-Greek artist began photographing the first archipelago. During the same period, thousands of asylum seekers crossed the Mediterranean. The photographs do not aestheticize misery, but question whether these archipelagos represent destinations or dangerous obstacles, whether they signify dreams or nightmares. Many are located near Ikaria, an island known for the longevity of its inhabitants. Christina DIMITRIADIS also found that there are many historic shipwrecks in the area and that these archipelagos were known as anthropofagos, 'man-eaters'. What to make of the optimism alluded to in the title? What hope is there when many families like the photographer's are affected by the ongoing crisis in Greece and refugees continue to drown in these waters? In these images, the application of a meditative visual language to contrasting fixed and changing elements suggests that new mythologies can emerge from the unpredictability and transience of the sea, history, and life, as has been the case here for millennia.
Content
Each of the more than thirty color photographs in the photo book 'Island Hoping' depicts an island or group of islands, too small to be inhabited by humans, rising from the sea and lying in the center of the image. The images share a horizon line where the water meets the sky, just below the center line. The hues are muted; the sky appears in a narrow range of the palest blue, its wisps of clouds like brushstrokes. The sea, also pictorially captured, is sometimes calm, sometimes darker and dynamic. The archipelagos - as these small, uninhabited islands are called - are like stone sculptures, some jagged and almost white, others round and dark. Although the serial format of the works is reminiscent of Bernd and Hilla BECHER's industrial series, it does not attempt to classify, nor is it an exploration of the art historical seascape." (adapted and modified text, original: © Art Agenda Review)
About German-greek photographer, Christina DIMITRIADIS (b.1967)
Photo books by as well as with works by Christina DIMITRIADIS
- Ed(s)/Author(s)
- Denys Zacharopoulos, Övül Ö. Durmusoglu
- Book design
- STUDIO LIALIOS VAZOURA
- Format
- Linen bound HC (no dust jacket, as issued), Ltd. to 500 copies