Learning from Pieria: Redefining postmodernism in the land of the Olympian Gods
Learning from Pieria: Redefining postmodernism in the land of the Olympian Gods
This series’ title is partly borrowed and largely inspired as a whole from the book 'Learning from Las Vegas', which is the well known manifesto of postmodernism , written in 1972 by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour. A significant impetus to the idea for this visual essay was also given by the Greek edited volume that was published in 1984 and is titled ‘Something beautiful – A tour of the modern Greek tackiness’. This project is a place-based one, which is actualized in Pieria (Greece) the coastal county where I was born and raised, at the bottom of the famous mythical Olympus Mountain.
With my camera I literally scouted the urban and rural areas of the county and tried to record the trend that started in Greece back in the 80s and 90s, where architects, engineers, owners and contractors were using neoclassical architectural elements to embellish whatever they built. Extravagant in quantity and quality, slipshod and artless plaster decorative details are present on facades, balconies, courtyards and fences of houses and hotels, but also at the beaches and even scattered in the fields. In many cases they are dramatically painted with flashy colors and sometimes they are even gold guided. In these photos, 'kitsch' becomes part of the exaggerating need of locals to 'distinguish' themselves from others, by considering it an element of wealth and prosperity, and at the same time keeps them demonstratively in touch with the ancient Greek civilization.
In Pieria, an area at the foot of a mountain which since 1938 has been declared a protected national park and since 1981 a ‘biosphere reserve’ by the UNESCO, the 'Olympic heritage' combines ancient history and mythology with the natural and built environment. The above led the area to be turned into a nodal center for the flourishing of a distinct local aesthetic style, which even became a tourist attraction, mainly for visitors from the Balkan peninsula.This series project the struggle of modern Greeks to develop a national identity that on the one hand is strongly encapsulating Greek antiquity and culture and one other hand is intensively diminishing the Muslim influence, which was rooted by the 400 years of the domination of the Turks in Greece. Having this procedure as a vehicle and the selective memory as a tool, modern Greeks propose and advocate to the Westerns that they are direct descendants and the continuity of the ancients Greeks.
Tolis Tatolas
This series’ title is partly borrowed and largely inspired as a whole from the book 'Learning from Las Vegas', which is the well known manifesto of postmodernism , written in 1972 by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour. A significant impetus to the idea for this visual essay was also given by the Greek edited volume that was published in 1984 and is titled ‘Something beautiful – A tour of the modern Greek tackiness’. This project is a place-based one, which is actualized in Pieria (Greece) the coastal county where I was born and raised, at the bottom of the famous mythical Olympus Mountain.
With my camera I literally scouted the urban and rural areas of the county and tried to record the trend that started in Greece back in the 80s and 90s, where architects, engineers, owners and contractors were using neoclassical architectural elements to embellish whatever they built. Extravagant in quantity and quality, slipshod and artless plaster decorative details are present on facades, balconies, courtyards and fences of houses and hotels, but also at the beaches and even scattered in the fields. In many cases they are dramatically painted with flashy colors and sometimes they are even gold guided. In these photos, 'kitsch' becomes part of the exaggerating need of locals to 'distinguish' themselves from others, by considering it an element of wealth and prosperity, and at the same time keeps them demonstratively in touch with the ancient Greek civilization.
In Pieria, an area at the foot of a mountain which since 1938 has been declared a protected national park and since 1981 a ‘biosphere reserve’ by the UNESCO, the 'Olympic heritage' combines ancient history and mythology with the natural and built environment. The above led the area to be turned into a nodal center for the flourishing of a distinct local aesthetic style, which even became a tourist attraction, mainly for visitors from the Balkan peninsula.This series project the struggle of modern Greeks to develop a national identity that on the one hand is strongly encapsulating Greek antiquity and culture and one other hand is intensively diminishing the Muslim influence, which was rooted by the 400 years of the domination of the Turks in Greece. Having this procedure as a vehicle and the selective memory as a tool, modern Greeks propose and advocate to the Westerns that they are direct descendants and the continuity of the ancients Greeks.
Tolis Tatolas