The Emergence of the Hidden

If photographs fascinate us, if their stories captivate our eye, it is because what they show us is never enough. The always-present narrator remains mute, invisible behind the camera, in an empty space that we, as viewers, venture to invade, following traces, doubts and fantasies. And it is from there, behind the scenes, that photographers direct our gaze. They seem to tell us: “Only this is what you can see,” letting us crave for some more, just a little bit more. Otherwise, without continuously spurring our desire, photographs would fail to capture our gaze and enthral us.

It has been said that photography is the art of exclusion and that its uniqueness lies in the ways that photographers have learned how to conceal. In her work Transfiguration, Antigone Kourakou lures us into her world with masks, gestures, tree branches, and the occasional unexpected glimpse of light. The faces are young and beautiful, sometimes expressionless or looking scared and always drowned in the silence of their depiction. The bodies seem to be captured in moments of constant tension, oftentimes bent, contorted, hidden behind foliage, sometimes naked or trapped in fabrics and tree branches. So, what could all that mean? What dictates this mise-en-scène? Impasses, ecstasies, revulsion, wandering and entrapment all emerge through a grid of elaborately structured pictures. We wonder whether these people are finally just ghosts of one woman. Maybe of a woman who narrates, who wears masks, who tries to utter a reason of survival in the familiar space of a dream or, on a second reading, I would say, of a nightmare.

The essential structural elements of the narrative in Kourakou’s work are the poses. Strange and sometimes peculiar poses urge us to read the bodies, faces and gestures as the need for Kourakou’s thoughts and feelings to find their visual equivalent in the world of images. The artist herself confesses that the reason she photographs is to express what is difficult to be expressed in words. Here, with Transfiguration, she seems to articulate a different kind of text, where the pictures, like communicating vessels, convey to one another meanings and connotations; they support and share an atmosphere of tension pervading her work. “My stories,” she says, “are made by the faces I photograph. It is the people that I’m trying to discover, to find something of myself in them, in one of their gestures, in a casual glance.”

In most cases, the surroundings of the faces Kourakou portrays are vaguely described: a terrace, a laundry room of old times, a yard or a staircase are all familiar yet deserted spaces. Amongst these photos, we occasionally find bits of nature, which, like punctuation marks in a text, interrupt or connect the narrated stories. These minimalist landscapes form and extend the dark and dystopic reality that surrounds the faces. Leafing through the book, we encounter hands touching the ground, naked bodies resting on the earth or a leaf transformed into a woman’s body. The dialogue with the natural environment is incessant in a way that the bodies seem to be finally immersed in nature: “The beginning and end of man,” as Kourakou notes. For her, there are no answers to give, only questions that she persistently repeats while waiting for the emergence of the hidden.

“Why this subject?” Kourakou wonders. “Why this form? Why do I choose something seemingly insignificant out of so many possible compositions? I do not know . . . Maybe because I feel that somewhere out there a truth lies hidden, something deeper that I am waiting to be revealed.

Costis Antoniadis

Athens, May 30, 2021

Costis Antoniadis (b.1949, Greece) is emeritus Professor of Photography at the University of West Attica. He is also a photographer, freelance curator, editor and author of numerous essays and articles on photography.on text goes here

Reflections From the Deep Waves of the Midnight Sea

What could my words contribute to the artistic achievements of Antigone Kourakou? To what is already seen and felt by way of seeing? The risk of inflation is significant when giving context to a work of art, and even more so when that work is rather ‘lyrical’ – best experienced in silence and endured without any sort of distraction. But allow me to elaborate a little first.

“Is there a pessimism of the strong, perhaps? [...] Is there a way of ‘light’ suffering from the very darkness of life, a tempting courage of the keenest sight which demands what is terrible, like an enemy – a worthy enemy – against which it can test its power, from which it will learn what ‘to fear’ means?” Nietzsche asked in the introducing paragraphs of his The Birth of Tragedy (1872). A fundamental question that he posed: was there ever in history a human sensibility for tragedy? And if there was indeed, did it derive from a real sense of anxiety or even the sheer memory of it? Or, rather, does our sense of tragedy – in line with Nietzsche’s assumptions – originate from a more playful yet deeply felt human need to unite the utmost superficial or mundane experiences with the utmost arcane and therefore mysterious elements of life (and death) by way of symbolic gesture and aesthetic form?

Perhaps that’s what we, contemporary human beings, have inherited from the ancient Greeks: an emotional understanding for the essence of what we commonly recognise as ‘Tragic’. A viewer’s response to the work of Kourakou derives from that very recognition of artistically fuelled ‘drama’, I would say, an instant identification of Tragedy as presented by way of a theatrical performance; an awe which, I assume, is triggered by the playful expression of a ‘light’ suffering from the very darkness of life.

We see elegant hands that seem to exist independently from the body; female figures situated in eccentric positions, interacting with peculiar objects or with weathered walls, which, by way of juxtaposition, are contrasted with gentle settings indicating more pastoral environments. A mysterious structure of humans, architecture, and nature – all set in a sombre interplay of light and shadow. It somehow looks familiar, but what does it all mean?

I might arrive on the muddy grounds of the cliché here, yet I dare to say that Kourakou’s photography is iconic. At first glance, the interplay of elements that lend her photographs a cosmic importance is immediately felt. The hermetic structure of it all, without a clear index or reference, makes her images exist on their own, independent from any specific indication of time and place. Like a wave between its heave and the force of gravity, these creative acts have a ‘momentum’. Situated within their own time-space construct, the images are embedded in one and the same primordial unity – a world of its own yet also one not completely uncommon to ours.

The settings are found, but the circumstances are created with the support of theatrical interference, impromptu yet negotiated. This adds to a certain gratification of the senses by way of abstraction rather than necessarily indicating a clear representation of anything specific. Is this the expression of Dionysian pessimism, perhaps? Does it draw sustenance, rather than recoil, from the disordered, disenchanted world left to us after the demise of metaphysics?

The choreography defines its lyrical beauty: rhythm of line, light and shade, symbolic gesture. All are typical aesthetic means to make a photographic work transcend its documentary qualities. However, Kourakou’s photography is essentially idiosyncratic because it is founded on her distinguished sensibility and intuition, a surplus of grace that cannot be comprehended by an accumulated understanding of its parts in isolation or by any mundane discourse. What is more, such a form of art for the sake of art, such unique and private vision, is essentially founded on a principle of Devotion.

Often, the artist is merely the messenger of what lurks behind the visible, yet it is only for the extraordinarily talented individuals to sanctify a gesture; to make their inventions come across as ‘lyrical’. While not necessarily fully controlling the sources of her inspiration, Kourakou’s acts are fuelled with ecstasy and the energy that reflects from it is seemingly determined by (and permeated with) the essence of creation – and being preserved in it.

It could well be echoing references to Art, to Love, to Death; to Femininity, the Hellenic, or simply anything that can trigger a response in the act of looking. That is what the viewer brings to the work, and I better avoid intermediating too much when you are entering the secluded space of where the imagery, configured by the artistic hand and the stimulating act of her muses, has now found its resting place.

Erik Vroons

Amsterdam, June 10, 2021

Erik Vroons (b. 1976, The Netherlands) is a freelance editor, educator, and author of several articles and essays in the field of contemporary photography. He is also active for GUP Magazine as Chief Editor since 2010.