‘My field of reference is “the street”; I neither seek extraordinary events, nor do I travel around in quest of a subject to photograph. I have been photographing the “riches” of everyday life on a daily basis. I seek nothing but the moment when narration becomes superfluous, with a view to creating a new universe where everything will be evident yet something will be left unrevealed, not with symbols but with hints. My starting point is a quote by Odysseas Elytis, an eminent Greek poet, that goes as follows: “with lime twigs you may capture birds, yet you never capture their singing. It takes a different kind of twig…”. The “project” I am working upon is a single one and it will be over once my life cycle is over, hoping that my every photo gets across to the viewer the intensity I felt when I raised my camera, opening for him small cracks in the solid wall of reality, allowing him to see beyond and over reality and its laws. I make use of reality so as to make photos, trying to shape something that pre-existed within me and at the same time giving back to life itself what I have borrowed for a single moment but now in an altered form as dictated by my own spirit; thus, I follow exactly the opposite course in comparison with those involved with applied or commemorative photography, who use photography as a means to show reality.’
Petros Kotzabasis’ street photography
