‘Aperspectival’ is a photographic series by architect and photographer Pygmalion Karatzas, taking a more intimate look at urban landscapes, influenced by the visual vocabulary of the ‘new topographics’ movement and the metropolitan condition ‘terrain vague’ as defined by Ignasi de Sola-Morales. In contrast to the carefully designed and integrated urban projects, contemporary cities are also characterised by their obsolete and unproductive spaces, undefined, without specific limits. As such they manifest as spaces of freedom and represent an anonymous reality outside the urban regeneration tendencies. This highly influential photographic movement from the 70ies was a break from the romantic and idealistic view of both urbanism and countryside and offered a more candid, and sometimes blunt, look at the man-altered landscape. It was a timely critical realisation of the cognitive dissonance maintained by the modernist ideal, and as such became more than just a viewing perspective, it expressed the condition of postmodernity.
The series is part of a larger project – ‘Integral Lens’ – a visual journey of contemporary architecture and cityscapes from the United States sponsored by the Fulbright Foundation Greece with the 2015-2016 Artist Scholarship. The College of Architecture and Design of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville was the affiliated academic institution.
