The Sithonia Municipality and the Panayotis and Effie Michelis Foundation present at the Historical and Folklore Museum of Nikiti the exhibition of archaeological photography by Socratis Mavrommatis “ΑΠΟΣΠΑΣΜΑΤΑ/ FRAGMENTS”
The exhibition is produced by the Panayotis and Effie Michelis Foundation and was successfully presented for the first time in Athens in February 2017.
The exhibition presents a small part of the work of the internationally acclaimed photographer Socratis Mavrommatis, who has dedicated his life to “applied” archaeological photography, developing a dialogue between Photography, Archeology, Art and Aesthetics.
The opening of the exhibition will take place on Friday, June 21, at 9.00 pm, and will be open until September 30 for educational purposes, so that schools in the area can also visit it.
The exhibition is part of the cooperation of the Sithonia Municipality with leading representatives of the intellectual and artistic world and marks the constant will of the Municipal Authority and the Mayor himself to present to residents and visitors events of high intellectual and artistic quality.
The selection of the photos presented, including both black and white, and colour photographs, were handpicked by the artist. The works depicted come from museums and archaeological sites of Greece as well as from the documentation of the restoration works conducted on the Acropolis in Athens.
In addition to providing documentation for archaeology scholars, however, his work brings to the fore details that are often invisible to the naked eye, communicating the photographer’s emotional involvement with his subject. His omnipresent, discrete gaze reveals important aspects of monuments and archaeological finds.
“The aesthetics of applied photography in archaeology evolved during the first one hundred years of photographically capturing monuments and objects of archaeological interest. From the 1850s to the early 1960s, translating a colourful reality into a black and white representation necessitated reading antiquity in an abstract manner and, consequently, acknowledging the artistic nature of representation.
In later years, when the shortcomings of colour photography in terms of reliability and life span were addressed, antiquity photography lost in artistic quality but gained in documentative power.
In contrast to the mature aesthetic of black and white photography, colour forced both photographers and viewers to accept a ‘truth’ closer to reality; yet, it also introduced a new element, one seeking to capture new forms, abstract patterns, or details of a new and exciting microcosm – the imperceptible information contained within a fragment.
These photos share a fragmentary quality in their rendering of monuments and objects, taking detail to the level of near invisibility, where documentation is served side by side with artistic intention. Fitting within the genre of applied photography in archaeology, these photographs were taken to serve in the documentation of the Acropolis of Athens restoration project and as illustrations in archaeological books and catalogues.”
Socratis Mavrommatis was born in Athens in 1949. He has participated in many photography exhibitions in Greece and abroad. From 1979 to 2010 he was the chief photographer for the Hellenic Ministry of Culture at the Acropolis Restoration Project.
INFO:
Duration: 21 June – 30 September 2019
Hours: Daily 11.00 – 13.00, 19.00 – 22.00
Free entrance
FB: Museum of Nikiti