Andreas Theologitis is a master of photographic form. Like a magician, he sculpts the naked female body and paints with his photo brush views from the cities he visits.
In these works he goes back to his well-known quest of shapes in black and white, where he originally started from quite some years ago. This time the spark comes from his recent travels in remote, distinctive Japan.
As Andreas wanders through the cities, he reconstructs his surroundings through the eyes of his other self, the architect. He presents the built-up areas like a transitional space which is interrupted and confused by wires, tracks and disturbances of all sorts. The loaded geometric shapes, the dense lines, the overloaded landscapes underline the overcrowded urban habitat. The few humans present are stifled by the overwhelming size of the huge buildings surrounding them and reinforce the feeling of loss of identity and personality in contemporary living.
In contrast there are also moments of calm; gardens, bells, lamps from bygone times, trees rich in foliage create unexpected, asymmetric geometrical compositions. Andreas goes beyond the stereotypical documentation of monuments and tourist attractions and invites us to go deeper, to follow the aura of this country, to explore what makes it so “Japanese”. He lets us listen to the flow of this pulsating natural environment and follow the scents depicted as works of art in shades of black and white.
Andreas shows two faces of Japan, one a loaded, even distorted, explosively growing urban landscape defined by the dictates of modern architecture and the other an esoteric, almost dream-like world marked by tradition and old values which, while fading, are still going strong. [Text by Dr Nina Kassianou – photography historian – curator] [Official Website]
