Athens Photo Festival opens
Last year, the Month of Photography underwent a change of name and became the Athens Photo Festival. It expanded and showed greater ambition; one could say that it matured. More innovations are taking place this year, as a large part of the festival’s exhibition program will be located at the Esplanade Building in Palaio Faliro, a venue familiar to those who visited the 2nd Athens Biennale in the summer. The official opening of the Athens Photo Festival 09, which will provide a good opportunity to see how this new undertaking is being received, has been scheduled to take place at 8 p.m. tomorrow. There are two sides to every story. By opting for a central venue, the institution acquires greater visibility, something that was missing from the previous 15 editions, when displays were scattered around Athens, in galleries, coffeehouses, museums and bookstores. At the same time, organizers are definitely taking a risk by moving the festival’s focus to the seaside at a time when the summer has long passed. Athens Photo Festival organizers are well aware of that risk and it is for this reason that they have prepared a well-structured and promising program for the Esplanade Building. Continuing another innovation introduced last year, exhibitions will once more be structured around a central theme. This year it will be that of «Crossroads,» perceived as the lifting of barriers and the coming together of different elements and ways of thinking. Overall, the event will showcase 34 solo and group exhibitions along with 17 video installation projects, with the participation of 280 artists from Greece and the international photography scene, a Photo Folio Review, day conferences on photography, educational programs, lectures, competitions and various parallel events. Clearly the Esplanade Building will be the center of the greatest annual photography event in Athens. It is also where we will see «Mutations II,» this year’s production of the European Month of Photography, as well as the large-scale production «Faces to Faces,» parts of which were shown at the French Institute in Thessaloniki and the Museum of Photography, «Brave New World» – the Athens Photo Festival internal production – and the new section «Indefinite,» which hosts the works of young photographers from European schools (this year it will be graduates of the Poznan Academy of Fine Arts in Poland). At the same time, a parallel program will be running in the city center. For more information on the artists and venues, see the festival’s website, www.hcp.gr.
