Greece

Anargyros Drolapas

www.adrolapas.com

Biography

Anargyros Drolapas is a Greek photographer living in Athens. He studied Physics and IT (University of Athens) and has steadily pursued photography, presenting his work in various magazines and group exhibitions.

Hydroessa is the ancient name of Tinos, a Greek island located in the Aegean Sea that is famous for its natural, geological environment and its strong theological traditions.

While visiting Tinos, I was in a period of deep grief and mourning. While I was there, I felt the urge to depict the otherworldly atmosphere of the island and the impression it had to me. Travelling around the island with only the sea as the limit of my wanderings, I visited as many of the villages and natural landmarks as I could reach. Starting from the very first day on the island, I felt the strong presence of the metamorphic marble that surrounded me.

Metamorphic rocks are created when existing rock types change their form and composition—marble is metamorphic. While I was in Tinos I started noticing optical patterns around me. Patterns on the rocks next to the sea, on the water itself, the shape of plants and fabrics—all of these dissimilar materials all reminded me of marble. It was like everything on that island were connected with that metamorphic rock; even some portraits of people I shot had a similar aura.

In Greece, marble is a decorative material that wealthy people use broadly in their houses and offices to demonstrate their power and wealth. Because Tinos is geologically full of a unique green marble, it is found everywhere on the island—in churches, museums, summer houses, banks, etc. It is also used in tombs and monuments; all of the cemeteries are full of marble tombstones. Thus, the marble is a vital part of both life and death. The ephemeral use of marble as a way to demonstrate money and power seems to lead (unavoidably) to death, where marble serves as an eternal weight that will stand on top of a tomb.

Being on an island made me especially aware of the metamorphic rock and triggered in me a series of thoughts about human nature and about living. My personal catharsis came as the result of a metamorphosis, as I moved from a grieving period to an attitude of positive thinking about what is important in life.
This series of photos is the narration of that experience.

A series of photographs inspired by Walter Benjamin's thoughts about Paul Klee's painting entitled Angelus Novus (New Angel). The depiction of an angel that seems incapable of intervening in what is happening in the present time. A distant observer from above that seems to sympathize but is unable to interact.

In the modern landscape, the Europeans are experiencing a mute crisis that threatens the structures and values of the European Union. The initial intentions and promises of the union about cooperation and solidarity are overturned at the altar of profit and fear. Fear about diversity and about an "external threat". Nowadays the role of the distant observer is adopted by common people. The question remains whether a citizen should act, rebel, protest or should stay neutral, "civilised" and unnoticed.

The photographer in this project acts as a medium that objectively reflects the dystopian image of now while he manages to stay unnoticed.

Athens has become a city full of loneliness.

Our city’s dark side emerged like being in a sickness period or mourning. Current era is still changing, or rather transformed into something else, more complex as a result of a continuous osmosis.

Today, however, Athens presents this mental landscape. It has the colour of a permanent standby, but also trust that nothing can be as before. Perhaps in the future when this difficult period we are living has elapsed, counting the time before and after the crisis, as it would be after wars or famines.

This snapshot of our current situationis the feeling of a constant depreciation and not the after effect of an explosion. It has the characteristics of an insidious pass that goes life in other coordinates, initially uncertain, volatile, shallow and unbecoming.

Addiction and familiarity with the change of urban life hypnotizes us and leads us to the assumption that each one of us is forced to surrender in front of the inevitable.

It is a confession of realism. But just as in the condition of the assumption, urban loneliness, the loneliness of the passers and the belief that the mess we are into is transient, give us the feeling that what we live now tastes bitter and feels like moving to another era.