Exploring the limits of human identity
As part of the re-emerging trend of printed photography, the industrious Greek photographer Angelos Christofilopoulos has recently published PAUSEIS – the silence in between – a monthly independent magazine.
A work of symbolism and archetypal imagery, the project contains a collection of images exploring the complexity of human identity in the 21st century through the medium of photography.
“What interests me the most in this project is to explore our limited identity, to become aware of it and how a limited identity creates conflicts. Especially in this new age of biotechnology, neuroscience and AI, where the race has started to find out where human consciousness actually is created,” he tells Kathimerini English Edition. “It is very exciting to have full responsibility for the content of the magazine, to explore the possibilities of the visual language without dogmas of the past,” he adds.
Giving photography a physical form, Christofilopoulos contends, is an important part of the project, “as it creates a different perception of the medium and its content.”
After graduating from the Focus School of Photography in Athens in 2000, Christofilopoulos embarked on a multifaceted career which has included collaborations with Greek and foreign print media outlets covering a vast array of genres.
Apart from portraits, reportage, theater photography and architectural photography, he also documented the Lebanon-Israel conflict which escalated into war in July 2006 and its aftermath.
He has covered stories in Israel, Palestine and Kosovo, as well as the financial meltdown in Greece in 2010, capturing in images the wide-reaching repercussions it had in Greek society for a decade.
From 2015 onward he started to document the refugee crisis in Greece and the Balkan region.
His has collaborated with other photographers in a series of projects and exhibitions, including the photo book “No Direction Home,” created by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Athens, and was part of the team that presented it in different cities in Germany.
He was invited in 2016 to take part in a group exhibition in Berlin, while he also participated in the first Athens Photoworld Festival in 2019.
He was selected to take part in the Blueborder project by Cafebabel magazine based in Berlin.
Christofilopoulos had his first exhibition, “Achronic,” in 2020, together with artist Maria Karathanou, specialized in site specific art projects. Inspired by this exhibition, also with Maria Karathanou, he has also developed the project SISIFOS.
