I have been photographing for about twenty years and I confess that I have only about ten or so photos of myself on my phone and none in printed form. What I do have though are a couple of digital photos from analog prints, mostly given to me from my parents. In case you were wondering, the young boy in the image below is me. Four years ago, I visited my best friend Yiorgo, who I grew up in the neighborhood of Koukaki decades ago. A visit to a best friend’s home is always a journey down memory lane. Memories of childhood, of life experiences, of play, of joy, and of loss. All there in the family album that revealed itself in the dining room after a shared meal. There I was in print form, in fading colors within a personal archive so pristine and organized. A visual history of life, of moments, cherished and so well preserved and effective. They brightened the cement walls of the apartment but also pierced through the walls, walked the streets, played in the playground, walked in front of the Parthenon, and became a new photograph.
Throughout my editorial career in the United States, I have entered dozens of high school events and other community gatherings, and what has struck me the most is the abundance of imagery, of shared memory, in the form of both the still and moving image. Even when I visited the home of friends I often had the feeling I was in a photography museum. The plethora of visual memory was astonishing, dating back decades from family trips to athletic events, parties, college graduation, reunion, and so forth. I always thought that this relates more to cultural tendencies and a way of life that is not so popular in other countries. I don’t remember ever being recorded with a video camera, not in the last five years or during my eleventh birthday many years ago. Memories are good, for the most part, as we usually hold on to the ones that we cherish the most, the ones that lift us. When rocky ones surface, don't fret because joyful ones are just around the corner to remind us of the ones that healed us, made us dream amidst realities, even within a short timeframe.
“Archive”, Motherland, Greece, 2016. ©Niko J. Kallianiotis
The function of the photograph is there to remind, to testify or simply record and it’s demise depends on the process of its creation. You can erase a digital photograph in under a second, regardless if you are emotionally fit to do so or not. But the analog photograph, or the printed one of an analog or digital base, demands a higher level of stamina. It has several stages that begin with the decision, the process and the final act. Meaning, you have to attend to the memory you want to delete, locate its home, (the archive), take it out, and throw it in the trash bin. And after you finish, you are still not done because you have to eventually take out the garbage. I find these stages to be highly psychological and theoretically fascinating because you can pause during any of the stages and rethink the course. But because of the digital format that most likely exists in the palm of your hand, the obliteration is rapid.
The preservation of memory will forever be with us regardless if it was represented in pictures or not. At the end of the day, the best photographs are the ones we never took but felt, felt its radiance, it’s joy and cry. They were a conversation, a sound, the air, the sea, thunder, and light. I was unaware, carefree, and silly when my picture was taken back at this moment. Who knew that I was going to be a photographer and one day I would take a picture of myself? Who knew that a particular land has become a sacred temple and that its significance could never be described in photographs, words, and expressions, but with only two letters; The Alpha and the Omega.
“In Two Letters”, Motherland, Greece, 2019. ©Niko J. Kallianiotis