Where chaos breeds inspiration (photo)

The photographer Lili Tsigou reveals to us, by way of a photograph album, the innermost emotions of 11 painters.

Architect and self-taught photographer, she has traveled to a few of the most inaccessible areas world wide, recording along with her digital camera individuals, monuments, streets, markets, celebrations, joys and sorrows. In Athens she turns into extra introverted, evidently the overly acquainted isn’t “unique” sufficient for her. Thus, her searches turned elsewhere, to escapes by way of artwork, as if she had been in search of the exoticism of lengthy journeys to painters' studios.

From her scholar days in Belgium she had recognized the peculiarities of the personal areas of nice masters equivalent to Brancusi and Rembrandt, whose studios had been open to the general public. Returning to Greece, he developed through the years the artwork of pictures, capturing the earlier than and after of conventional and classical buildings on behalf of the Nationwide Financial institution's Technical Service.

After which got here the concept of the ateliers. Niece of the painter Thanos Tsigos, her nice love for portray led her to the inside of the studios of varied painters, with a few of whom she turned shut mates.

Fragmentary and selective, Tsigou's eye and lens deal with all that constitutes fascinating “secrets and techniques”, bringing them to gentle and the main target of the viewer's curiosity.

So he was free to invade them as typically as he wished, photographing and documenting these very particular microcosms: particulars that few would discover, unfinished works, palettes and colours, stacked canvases, easels, sketches, completed works ready to be exhibited. Fragmentary and selective, Tsigou's eye and lens deal with all that constitutes fascinating “secrets and techniques”, bringing them to gentle and the main target of the viewer's consideration.

Snapshot from the atelier of Giorgos Rorris. Photograph: Lili Tsigou.

She has mentioned herself: “My gaze is consistently trying to find relationships between objects, issues, area, for expressions on faces. Perhaps my job made me that manner, as a result of it's based mostly on remark. As in journey, I’m able to “seize”. After all, I may say that in a manner I'm not touring, I'm simply an extension of my machine in all my facets.”

After twelve years of coping with this curiosity that turned a ardour, after persistent and uninterrupted visits to the workshops of painters and sculptors that she appreciated, she collected her materials and as we speak she delivers it to us by way of a photograph album entitled “Artists' Ateliers – Chaos and Inspiration ».

Eleven vital artists, Irini Iliopoulou, Rubina Sarelakou, Michalis Madenis, Kyriakos Rokkos, Stefanos Daskalakis, Vassilis Papanikolaou, George Rorris, Vassilis Nikolaidis, Timos Bandinakis, Petros Karavevas and the sculptor Vassos Kapandais – the who doesn't are in life now – and the very private, nearly sacred for a few of them areas, the place daily they spend (or spent) countless hours of inventive labor and inspiration, star within the work introduced by Tsigou.

Regardless of the chaos that usually prevails within the workshops, as may be seen within the pictures, the photographer explains: “There are studios which might be immaculate, orderly, the place the pencils are positioned subsequent to one another ‒ this explicit work takes time daily in order that when the job is finished to tidy up. The difficulty is what the artist's temperament is and the way it’s mirrored in his area.”

The studio of Kyriakos Rokos. Photograph: Lili Tsigou

The atelier of Giorgos Rorris. Photograph: Lili Tsigou

Stefanos Daskalakis in his atelier. Photograph: Lili Tsigou.

And so the photographer emerges as an off-the-cuff biographer of their inventive growth. Via this significantly cautious bilingual version (Greek and English) and due to the clever collection of pictures, one can decode the temperament, themes and stylistic selections of every artist.

On the similar time, along with descriptions of all of the studios, pictures of that are listed, the multi-page guide is accomplished by a sequence of texts of an essay nature.

These are: “The artist's workshop – A historical past of tradition” by James Corridor, “The “nests” of artists” by Louiza Karapidakis, the devoted to the creator “The artist at work” by Nikos Paisios, “Images and artwork » by Stefanos Daskalakis, an interview by Giorgos Rorris with Louiza Karapidakis, Konstantinos Myrianthi and Lili Tsigkou, and eventually a confessional textual content by Lili Tsigou herself.