What was your first memory with photography?

Eleni Mouzakiti (EM): What I recall are two photographs that I took in the summer when I was 18 that excited me. I also remember a photograph of me as a small child together with my cousin. I was holding two snowballs and crying for some reason that I do not remember. Photographs found in our family albums have often an unsettling effect as they bring to the surface unresolved emotions.

Tell us a bit about your educational path. How your German literature studies did impact on your own narrative?

EM: My first workshops on photography were on darkroom techniques and portraiture in Heidelberg. That was during my post-graduate studies on German and Comparative Literature. Coming back from Germany, I went to study photography at AKTO College of Applied Arts in Athens and did some workshops at the Photography Circle in Athens. Later I decided to explore more and went on to study Photography on a MA level at Goldsmiths College, University of London. I began to be interested in photographic practice as research and did a PhD at the School of Art, Design and Technology – University of Derby, where I researched the issues involved in the representation of alienation – estrangement in the public realm.

My German literature studies did have and may still have an impact among other things on my photography. They infused my narratives. My obsessions found shelter in many German writers like Heinrich von Kleist (from the romanticism period), Rilke, F. Kafka, Th. Mann. I have liked particularly modernist writers exposing existential concerns about their immediate reality and experience and expressionistic short stories and novels that dealt with alienated protagonists trapped in complex situations beyond their comprehension and control. I know it sounds a bit of cliche. But at the time I was in London for my MA Photography studies I was interested in the subject of alienation, urban isolation, anonymity, estrangement. In a way I am still interested in all these, though the focus has shifted a bit. Generally speaking in most of my series I am interested among other things in the notion of “absorption” in the public realm. So, I think there might be a red thread that connects all of my series. The main theme evolves around connection, dis-connection, “distance”, the sense of belonging and the sense of longing. Romanticism’s issues still matter for me in these days.

Tell us more about In Limbo, Grids, Body-Landscape-Urbanism, Quotations... In those early works there is a recurrent form: the grid.

EM: The photographs in my series in limbo have all been taken in the London underground. The subway was and still is a source for an anti-urban representation in the photography tradition. This anti-urban representation accords with Simmel's theory that presents the city as a source of emotional distress for its people or as a source that generates isolation or alienation/estrangement. I was interested in representing more or less what Simmel terms as «blasé outlook», the typical outlook of city people, a kind of absorptive behavior again. I also wanted to focus on the “anonymous hero”. I was also interested in the appearance of people in the cities in terms of 'seriality'. This notion influenced the way of representing this series in grids. Initially, in an effort to depict and represent photographically the aforementioned concepts that seemed to me the prevailing qualities of the metropolitan realm, I have focused on areas in London where council flats predominate. I also lived in a council flat near the Barbican. So, my series Grids, which consists of night urban-scapes, began to develop parallel to the in limbo (London underground) series.

© Eleni Mouzakiti from the series 'In Limbo', 2000-2005

The modernist grid of architecture, prevailing in these night photographs, interested me because, as Coleman argues, high blocks are regarded as creating anonymity because they segregate people at different levels instead of allowing the normal interactions that take place on the street when houses are on the ground.  These nightscapes of urban areas, being almost empty of people formed a contrast with the pictures I was taking at the same time in the London underground, a place full of people. Unlike Walker Evans or Luc Delahaye, who did their projects with a concealed camera in the New York subway and Paris metro respectively, in order to obtain the desired distance - objectivity, I projected my own situation, my emotional state and concern in my work, while I was undertaking this series of photographs. I was part of the world that I was observing and interpreting photographically. Experience, observation and interpretation are blended in a subjectivised inquiry since observer and the world, knower and known are inseparable.

The form of presentation, i.e. the grid formed a crucial part of my in limbo project. It was not just a formal device. It constituted the visual resolve of my project. The number of pictures in each grid, came out of an intense experimentation with different lay outs, edits and arrangements. Generally speaking, grid produces a kind of condensed space, forms spatial and other relations. Grids involve rhythms. Through the grid I am seeking the connective properties. The grid is like a crowd scene and creates the impression of physical closeness and emotional distance, which one finds in the underground. Each one is depicted to pursue her/his own “praxis” and there is no communication.

© Eleni Mouzakiti from the series 'Grids'

In the Body – landscape - urbanism series I am using the grid in an effort to create a set of interconnected moods and emotions.
The Quotations series appears also in grids. While editing the series and looking at them I had the impression that they referred to biblical scenes. They formed an attempt to illustrate the Book par excellence of the western tradition, something similar to the medieval laicorum literatura.

© Eleni Mouzakiti from the series 'Paradise on Earth'

© Eleni Mouzakiti from the series 'Quotations'

How did your research evolve with respect to those early days? What is the general process for your projects?

EM: In the beginning experimentation with different types of cameras and films has been important. Since my studies at Goldsmiths College practice as research has been more crucial to my work. My projects take long to evolve. I am interested in a reflective practice (both self-reflective and self-reflexive). Usually there are periods where I am deeply absorbed in the photographic action, which are followed by periods of editing, thinking, researching, reading and discussing with friends and fellow artists the work that I am doing. And then again a new cycle of photographing etc. begins.

Your series Riss and Paradise on Earth flourished in what you call “a romantic landscape, a breach in managing memory”, outside the urban reality. Tell us more about them.

EM: The Paradise on Earth series came out of my Leisure Time series and the diptych Riss came out of the Paradise on Earth series. The photographs in the Paradise on Earth series are all taken in Ruegen island in Germany. Ruegen attracted me photographically as the romantic topos par excellence. It was the favorite place of German intellectuals, religious men and Romantic painters like Caspar David Friedrich and Phillip Otto Runge, who have painted here iconic Romantic landscapes. However, the reason I visited Ruegen for the first time in 2009 was to photograph for my Leisure Time series the so-called “Colossus of Prora” the 4,5 km long modernistic building that stretches along the Prora bay. It was conceived by the Nazi “Kraft durch Freude” (Strength through Joy) organization for mass vacation by the sea - originally planned to accommodate 20000 Aryan vacationers. At the time I started this project in 2009 the fate of the "Colossus of Rügen," seemed uncertain as politicians, investors, historians and scientists had different views and interests. Today however, the various parts of the building offer sublime modernistic ruins, a Documentation Center, a dance club, a privately owned cheap phantasmagoric museum, a café-restaurant and most recently four of the remaining blocks (500m long each) were transformed into luxury apartments - hotel rooms. In Prora, history, aesthetics and politics are closely interwoven and this aspect interests me particularly. Furthermore, what I find of a particular aesthetic interest in Prora, is the juxtaposition of the visitors vulnerable bodies who come here to see the spectacle or to have a swim, against the brutality of this massive architectural Nazi artifact. Just like in Friedrich’s paintings the human figures that turn their back to us remind us that in this natural as well as historical spectacle we are only latecomers.

© Eleni Mouzakiti from the series 'Paradise on Earth'

© Eleni Mouzakiti from the series 'Paradise on Earth'

The diptych Riss was created on the occasion of the Forgetmenot exhibition at Elika Gallery in Athens. Until that time I did not include these two photographs in my Paradise on Earth series. I have borrowed the term ‘breach’ (translated from German word ‘Riss’) in memory from Foucault’s lectures series The Birth of Biopolitics, where he talks about the rise of neo-liberalism in Germany and the economical growth of post-war Germany on the basis of a "breach" in history and subsequently in memory.

Leisure Time is one of your latest photographic works; can you tell us more about this evolution into a new direction and its subtle political backbone?

EM: In this ongoing series I am exploring among other things the leisure time geography. I am adding or subtracting photographs very often. I have hundreds that interest me. I am now in a stage where I could take out some photographs and change the title to “a fantasy of [not] belonging”*. 

I would say that the focus has shifted the last year a bit. It started in 2005 and these shifts are inevitable. Or to be more accurate the focus was there but I couldn’t see it or put it in words. I was interested in people’s absorptive behavior in the public open spaces, in the notion of stillness and of longing and in (romantic) landscape. Landscape as a venue to rethink distance.

© Eleni Mouzakiti from the series 'Leisure Time'

Any mentor, teacher or anybody/something else that has had an impact on how you understand your work?

EM: I think Ian Jeffrey, whom I met at Goldsmiths college during my MA degree in Photography. At that time, 20 years ago, I could not understand exactly what he was often talking about or I thought that I had different views. I can see his influence in my teaching method too. Generally speaking my tutors at Goldsmiths accepted everything we showed them and they found always something interesting about the pictures we showed, they remarked only the interesting things. It was a very supportive non-judgemental environment, which helped everyone evolve. Now Kostas Ioannidis has often an impact in how I understand my work. Particularly some fellow artists, or participants in my workshops also help me understand things about my work. And now you through these questions and the discussions we have.

In your ongoing project Heading West, you chose a very little documented area of Greece, impregnated with contemporary Greek history, and you returned to do portraits but this time more staged within that frame? Why?

EM: When I started photographing in this region i.e. the western and northwestern region of Greece in 2015, they were among the 20 poorest regions in the European Union in terms of GDP per capita. My intention in the first place was not to do portraits. What attracted me in the first place to the area of Missolonghi and Amvrakikos Gulf was the distinctive landscape (flat and vast), the energy, the aura of the area, something like the morbid atmosphere of Visconti's Death in Venice. I was interested in the particular characteristics of the region. It also reminded me of some Walker Evans' and Stephen Shore's photographs. The Missolonghi and the Amvrakikos Gulf wetlands are not usually visited by aesthetes and the locals are not in the tourist business. They are usually poor fishermen; kind and a bit timid, in my eyes at least… But then again, when I start to seek a meaning for the photographs and a meaning for the place, I remember Ian Jeffrey writing about P.H. Emerson's Norfolk. «Norfolk's meaning was crucial to Emerson's enterprise. It was not simply a beautiful spot. To its devotees Norfolk seemed like the last enclave of ancient life in England». So, the wetlands area in West Greece seems to be my East Anglia. A distant world, perhaps a kind of romantic landscape fantasy, with all the ethically problematic detachments of a remote perspective. A perspective, which I am always questioning. 

© Eleni Mouzakiti from the series 'Heading West'

© Eleni Mouzakiti from the series 'Heading West'

The portraits helped me to overcome a bit this remote perspective. They are partially staged. People know that they are being photographed, but the scenes are not staged. The people do collaborate with me in this process. I like to ask them various things about the area, or sometimes about their lives and interests. They are also curious about my interest in the area. I like the inwardness that most of them show. A kind of absorption, again but it also resonates with their timid -to my eyes- nature. The last years it is difficult for me in ethical terms to take an image of another person. I am a different person from the one I was, when I was doing the in limbo series in the London underground. I do not know, if I could photograph persons anymore without their consent. But even with their permission, there are always difficult questions that have to be answered. These questions relate to (unresolved) issues of power connected with photography as apparatus.

Do you have any comments on how photography has been or is evolving in Greece? Is there anything you have observed in particular?

EM: There is much energy right now. The last 8 years I have the feeling that something crucial might be developing here. I see many practitioners whose work I find particularly interesting. We also see a demand for photography education. There are interesting festivals and platforms.

Is there any show you’ve seen recently that you find inspiring or book…?

EM: The work of Firelei Baez, an artist I did not know and saw at the Berlin Biennale stayed with me. Also Kostas’ Bassanos’ The Middle of Nowhere at the Elika gallery in Athens where he presents a series of works and an in situ installation that deals with the concept of space as it is defined and derived from textual references.  Phenomena (a collaborative project - photobook by Peter Helles Eriksen, Tobias Selnaes Markussen and Sara Brincher Galbiati), a photobook about UFO and alien encounters, created by the Phenomena collective.

As a curator/tutor what do you think about photography in the era of digital and social networking?

EM: I have mixed feelings about the current climate and the expansion of social media. Something totally new is emerging culturally. Everything is shaped through it. Experiences, photography itself and culture are shaped by the social networking. So, I feel overwhelmed. I find it difficult to stay focused. All this sharing and connecting without connecting…they create a kind of disorder for me in spatial relations.  I am skeptical about the various platforms and particularly about photography competitions. All this exposure on many platforms… and on the other hand most of the works vanish after some days in a cloud, in this social networking world.

© Installation view, European Month of Photography, Athens, 2015. The exhibition 'Re: View 015' hosts the photographic work of 27 emerging photography graduates of the Hellenic Centre for Photography

Tell us more about your teaching and your collaborations in your educational projects. Any projects or plans for the future?

EM: I started my first collaboration with Lambros Papanikolatos in 2013. I had an assignment to do a workshop on Night Urban Scape photography at the Hellenic Centre for Photography and I proposed Lambros to collaborate in this workshop. Since then we have been teaching people who have an interest in Photography as a Creative Practice. I also collaborate with art historian Kostas Ioannidis in my educational projects. Sometimes, we collaborate the three of us. We do not share always the same views but we do share the same educational methods. It seems crucial to us to expose the workshops participants to different, sometimes opposing, views. We invite them to look at their own implication in a situation or subject they feel drawn to photograph and explore. Practice as research interests me particularly. It is a method I use and advise my advanced photography students to follow.

As you may know Romanticism, its political connotations and historical reception is one of my main research interests many years now. Trying to find common ground to work on this with other people and to combine in my teaching job my studies on German Literature with Photography I am now planning a series of workshops that have to do with photography and Literature. I feel extremely lucky to have a close relationship with people who have deep knowldege of all these issues. Names , dates and details to be announced soon.

Three books of photography that you recommend?

EM: Ohh, this is the most difficult question …may I recommend 30 or more? Well, starting from what we usually call theory I would recommend Jae Emerling Photography: History and Theory. Then I always recommend my students to begin to look at W. Evans’ American Photographs, Robert Frank’s The Americans, Stephen Shore American Surfaces, Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, in order to trace an evolution in what is called documentary (art) practices until the mid 80s and then there are many, many books I could recommend. To name just a few: Paul Graham’s, American Night and A Shimmer of Possibility, Kazuma Obara’s, Silent Histories, Sophia Borges’, The Swamp, Ksenia Yorkova’s, Letters for two and no one else, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin’s, People in Trouble Laughing Pushed to the Ground (I adore this one), War Primer and Holy Bible. I also find particularly interesting the work of Jo Spence.

How do you deal with the exhibition of your works?

EM: It depends on the works and the space available. For instance, for the in limbo series the ideal space for exhibiting these grids would be a narrow, long and low ceiling room. This should be in accordance with the sense we have in the underground, a sense of restriction and tightness. When I exhibited some photos of my Leisure Time series in 2007 in the 1st Biennale for Contemporary Art, I have asked for two walls in a corner and I have printed the images in various sizes and tried to create with all the pictures a group like the groups of people I photograph for this series. There are many decisions at different levels to be made. I always think a lot about the relation between the images in an exhibition space, the connections that might arise, the sizes, the framing, the lay out etc. All these decisions influence or often create - produce meaning and become a crucial part of the viewer’s experience.

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LINKS
Eleni Mouzakiti 
Urbanautica Greece