Photographs - Angelos Balatsas
Library of Kauniainen, Finland, 2021
The photographs presented in this exhibition were taken for personal reasons; they are not parts of a specific project and are not backed up by any “message-carrying concept''. They are simply parts of a peculiar visual diary that I have kept for the past six years.
In 2006, while living in Greece, I came into contact with photography through the classes of my teacher, Platon Rivellis. He, transmitted to me his love and admiration for photographers whose art has a common personal nature; Photographers such as Eugéne Atget, Walker Evans, Carleton Watkins, Julia Margaret Cameron, Jenny deVasson, August Sander, Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus, André Kertész, Lazló Moholy-Nagy, Florence Henri, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Roy Decarava, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Bernard Plossu, Luigi Ghirri and many others.
For several years after my first contact with the work of important photographers, I stopped taking photographs. In part, because I came to realize the distance that separated their work from mine leading to my disappointment.
Six years ago, however, and with many changes occurring in my life, I started taking photographs vigorously, with high spirits. I had just moved from Denmark to Finland, my first child was born, I started a new job, and came into contact with a new social environment.
Now, I attribute such high spirits to the conscious use of the photographic medium for the production of personal work but also to the gradual discovery of small pleasures in the photographic process: The resolution of visual problems during shooting, the choice of themes and the imposition of (elastic) boundaries in the way in which I approach them, the provocation of chance and finally, the selection of photographs.