The way Nikos Kessanlis photographed Chryssa Romanou over the course of many years bears not even a distant relationship to the usual plunder couples bring back with them from their vacations. At first glance, we notice how the lens focuses on something mysterious, eccentric, strange. Kessanlis places his wife in those landscapes, because it’s his only way of photographing anything that could be considered a tourist site. He seems to believe that a fascinating presence like Chryssa’s lends the landscape not only the intensity it needs, but its very reason for existing.

For us to understand the importance Kessanlis ascribes to his irreplaceable model, it’s enough to put our finger over Chryssa’s figure and momentarily make her disappear from the photograph. The landscape suddenly loses all of its enchantment. As if the surrounding scene has no independent existence, as if it exists only because of that much-photographed woman.We remove our finger and there she is again. Chryssa is the operative event for the shot. She doesn’t pose the way today’s women do, looking at the camera as if they are or might become its lover. Chryssa looks within herself. Even when she’s annoyed or bored she exists—she is. She represents and declares a Heideggerean ontology, a Dasein of her own.
With the support of Outset Greece.

Curation: Dimitris Tsoublekas & Amanta Michalopoulou

Research: Anna Tsoubleka

Coordination: Maria Ragia