Ways Of Escape By Antonis Theodoridis

When photographing Athens in 2016 and 2017, Theodoridis could easily have taken the road trod by many before, glamorizing or deliberately shooting only the state of emergency that the city is in. Instead, his series ‘Ways of Escape’ pays homage to Athens, and to Greece, as the birthplace of Western culture in a strangely surreal way. In the series, we see spaces that match the narrative of ‘escape’ suggested by the title — a hole beneath a reclining sun lounge, a barbed wire fence silhouetted against a mountain — but we don’t see people trying to leave. Cast in soft Athenian light, traditional Greek aesthetics so often used within a Western context to connote power or status, are juxtaposed against a the contemporary city. The people photographed are smiling, and there is a sense of strange dream-like stillness in each frame. Theodoridis has created a series of riddles that ask that the viewer to interpret the narrative for themselves.