A photograph taken by Eirini Vourloumis.
“Depression Era,” a show of 250 photographs that opens on Wednesday at the Pireos Street annex of the Benaki Museum, documents the far-reaching impact of Greece’s brutal economic crisis on the country’s urban and social fiber.
The works of the exhibition, which also features a few video installations and an extended collage of texts and print media cutouts related to the crisis, are the product of the Depression Era Project, a collective of more than 35 local photographers, writers, curators, designers and researchers, over the past four years.
The show includes works by Panos Kokkinias, Spyros Staveris, Pavlos Fysakis, Dimitris Michalakis, Eirini Vourloumis and Yiannis Theodoropoulos. Running through January 11, the exhibition has been curated by Petros Babasikas, Pavlos Fysakis, Yorgos Prinos, Dimitris Tsoumplekas and Pasqua Vorgia.
Speaking at a press conference on Monday, organizers said that the project aims to document the social, historical and economic transformation currently under way in the debt-wracked nation as a way of creating an “unofficial history” of recent developments. Among the objectives set out by the collective is to question the mainstream belief in progress and human improvement.
While personal styles may differ, a sense of gloom, defeat and discontinuity runs through most of the 250 images on the walls of the Benaki.
“The project was inspired by the need to forge a new narrative amid all the noise created by Greek crisis,” Fysakis, who masterminded the project, told journalists.
Parts of the project have already been showcased at the Bozar Center for Fine Arts in Brussels, at the Mois de la Photo in Paris, the PhotoBiennale of the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography and the Ebros theater squat in Athens.
The Depression Era collective, and the KOLEKTIV8 non-profit group which supports it, were founded in 2011. The current project is funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.
Benaki Museum, 138 Pireos, tel 210 345 3111. Wednesday’s opening starts at 8 p.m. Regular visiting hours are Thursdays & Sundays 10 a.m. – 6 p.m., and Fridays & Saturdays 10 a.m. – 10 p.m.
For more information visit: depressionera.gr/
source: ekathimerini.com
STUDIO 3 NEWCASTLE AUSTRALIA 