Fanni Constantinou
It is all about the creations of a photographic lens that intentionally defies the essential attributes of the craft: faithful representation of the visible, sharp focus, well established methods and choice of materials. Moody images that do not aim at depicting the subject, but instead extract the artist’s intention to interpret the visible. Vehicles for expressing her own intellectual and emotional yearnings.
In a visit to her birthplace, Maro Vandorou is led to the ancient site where departing souls received a last farewell before the long journey to the underworld. Amidst the bustle of the modern city, to this island of silence charged with ancient memories, unconsciously, unwittingly she returns again and again. She is haunted. How can she communicate the grief of parting, the pain of choosing to be uprooted from her birthplace, to leave behind the language, the light? Giving material form to these questions will allow her to explore the essence of existence beyond place and beyond time, thus commencing the process of articulating some possible answers in visual form. It is a deep, arduous, mystical process that will yield images in photographic form.
A parallel journey, equally delicate and fragile, marks a barely visible passage from the realm of thoughts and feelings to the material form. Fragmented, enigmatic spaces. Translucent, vulnerable paper. Dreamy, ghostly images created with classical and contemporary methods of photography yet printed with the noble process of platinotype (fusion of the old with the new, the ever-present dimension of time). Ethereal, airy installation; nothing rigid, nothing steady or constant.
Fragmented light emerging out of darkness. The poetic deposition of Maro Vandorou, the first part of a long, esoteric exploration.