If therefore your eye is simple,
your whole body will be full of light
(Math 6:22)
art and texts
urban
technical notes
in our struggle to depict the unseen, we have found ourselves in a position that is difficult to comprehend. we are handling a tool that was first to be used with artistic intent while at the same moment was connected to the "new" technology. a technology being magnified in geometric sequence, and intensely concerning the deepest existential agony of the human person. a technology standing at the forefront of the evolution of scientific activity. an activity we face with awe, admiration, and often with reservedness.
photography was followed by other new media tools. today, even the most classic ways of creative artistic discourse, have some kind of connection to technology. the mentioned primacy of photography is enhanced by the characteristic of the “intermediate"; it is a temporary primacy related with what has preceded and what follows. thus, photography has the ability (in relation to its following tools and media) to more easily recall the knowledge of art history and at the same time to understand more directly (in comparison to the preceding classical tools) the current of technology.
photography may therefore self-evidently remind us of what we leave behind and associate in the smoothest way with what follows. moreover photography can help us raise the question of the existential and ontological character of technology, and deal with it avoiding the traps of illusion and fear. this is very related to the evolution in the use of artistic media; the questions we ask with these tools, and the way of working and using them..
(written in 1996 on the occasion of the solo exhibition "urban" at the gallery "111" in Thessaloniki)