Georges Salameh, is a Sicily based Greek-Lebanese visual storyteller. After film studies in Paris, he moved to Athens where he made his first creations. He now lives and works in Palermo.
Text and images © Georges Salameh
The photographic work that I have been doing intermittently since 2009 is based on the notion of sedimentation. It’s also a personal documentation of Athens’ depression era.
I explore the city through the eyes of an urban geologist. Based on my experience of Athens, explored over eight years in the ‘90s and ‘00s in a photographic series titled “Αθήνα σ’ακούω – Athens I hear you”, I have now been wandering its streets as a self-exile.
I re-examine different parts of today’s Athens, directly accessible to observation, looking for hints of simple human gestures, trying to reconstruct their story by studying their layout.
In both the shooting and the editing phase, I treat these images/scenes with alienation and humor; I reconsider them for new narrative elements, such as the latest social and political changes, ancient and contemporary history, and the poetics of realism and light.
The evolution of Athens is projected from these new “geological formations” through research expanding in time, but also as an insight into radical changes to come.
