Thodoris Tempos

Two and a half years ago, a visit to the area around Mesolongi, Aetolikon and Kotihi, aiming at the recording of the life of “ivarades”, that is the fishermen of the lagoon, led us to different paths.

Paths of quest , not recording. We went there again and again. We lived on the vivaria. The water gradually started whispering its own stories. Daemons and ghosts, creatures of the lagoon, weeds and rocks talked all the time in a mystic language. Could the camera lens record them? The first photos proved that it could. While Thodoris Tempos was showing me his photos, I could clearly listen to the stories the water was narrating. And then something strange happened, an interaction of some mysterious kind.

Every story Thodoris read and I wrote down, led him to a new photo, and every photo of his talked about something else. So we gathered photos and texts that talk about the same things but in a different way. In this exhibition only a number of these pictures are presented. Pictures that tell a lot to those who want to listen. Water says different things to different people. It just sends its representatives.

A turtle here, a piece of wood there, weeds moving in the sea and all of them whispering that the water that sleeps not.

Melissa Stoili