The area that surrounds Athens is composed by a certain antithesis, as the vast urban surface meets with the countryside.
Surrounded by the silence of centenarian olive groves, meadows, mountains and seas, the city today struggles to carry the weight of its own existence, facing a rather tough and tense present. This is a prolonged silence that seems to surround the loud and desperate cry that comes out of the capital city.
The images of this project were made around the outskirts of Athens, less than 30 miles away from the heart of the capital. It is the area that surrounds the depressed city and all the millions of its citizens’ individual stories. Outside the invisible borders of the extended metropolitan area, in the land that lies past the edge of the city, time seems to move parallel but in a different density. There is an inevitable contrast between the two states, a parable manifested by the discreet mystery that trees seem to hide among their branches and seas among their waves. This is an alternate state in parallel time, where silence seems to carry inside it a waiting, patiently whispering a long forgotten language. I worked on a series of images that were aiming to express this undefined, mystical presence that wanders around these areas, a lost connection between us and a beauty that regardless of its obvious magnificence it always remains far, strange and unfamiliar, hidden behind an unreasonable mystery. For it’s not only nature, eventually it is beauty itself that has lost its intimate character, overtaken by the values of an artificial illusion that’s reflected through our collapsing cities.
A landscape is an illimitable state. It’s not restricted within the visible area in front of our eyes, but it extends in an undefined distance, reaching for the limits of our interpretation over ourselves and the world around us. It is because every landscape is eventually defined as the vast open field where our thoughts and feelings are meeting with the outside world. It’s both an imaginary field and an actual reality, a perpetual state and a momentary revelation.
Petros Koublis was born in 1981, in Serres, Greece. His relationship with photography started in 2000, after having dedicated some years in painting. he studied photography in Athens and he participated in a series of seminars on the history of photography, being mostly developing my style through a constant personal exploration.
Website: www.petroskoublis.com
