MedPhoto is a collective experiment, focusing on documentary photography and its social and artistic impact. It is a low-budget festival which employs activities and curatorial proposals that depict specific aesthetic and political views, sometimes beyond the prevailing methods of presenting a work of art. Prints in the exhibitions are made according to the highest standards in order to render the visual content in the most reliable way. The Festival’s choice for frameless exhibits creates a narrative that focuses on content rather than the object which bears it. A photographic work of art is characterized by its infinite technical reproduction; especially, in a digital era where the reproduction sources are as infinite as the copies, the notions of originality and uniqueness are even more ambiguous and constantly re-defined. To quote Vilem Flusser, photography’s value is not in its being a thing, but in the information it carries on its surface. It is the information, not the thing, which is valuable. MedPhoto exhibitions attempt to convey this shift of significance. Strongly supporting that presentation contributes critically to content construction, MedPhoto Festival suggests a curatorial proposal which re-contextualizes photographers’ works within a new narrative, a new collective project.
Pavlos Fysakis
artistic director
Born in Athens in 1969. Co-founder and curator in the art collective Depression Era and the non-profit cultural organisation KOLEKTIV8. He has worked for many years as a freelance photographer for newspapers and magazines. He teaches photography at FOCUS School of Arts. He has exhibited his work in Athens and abroad, in solo and group exhibitions at the BOZAR, Biennale of Nice, Photobiennale of Thessaloniki, FetArt, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete, the Benaki Museum, etc. In 2010, he published the photography book Land Ends, which was awarded the prize for best Greek photography book for 2010.
www.pavlosfysakis.com
Maria Maragkou
curator, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete
Maria Maragkou is an art critic and curator, in charge of the artistic direction of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete, in her hometown Rethymnon. She worked as an art critic in the art column in the Greek daily newspaper Eleftherotypia from 1982 until its final issue of the printed version at 2014. She has organised more than fourty exhibitions in various institutions in Greece and abroad. She was Commissioner of the Greek national participation twice at the Venice Biennale [1995 and 2011] and at the Sao Paolo Biennale [1991]. Her curatorial practice focuses on issues of contemporary art that relate with society such as violence, racism or the refugee crisis. She is a member of the Greek chapter of AICA-The International Association of Art Critics and of the Athens Daily Press Editors Union [ESIEA].
Pasqua Vorgia
curator
She studied cultural management (MA) at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences in Athens, organizational psychology (MA) at Columbia University in New York (as an Onassis and Fulbright scholar) and psychology at the Kapodistrian University of Athens. She has worked as an independent documentary film producer and freelance writer for the Greek press. In 2011, she joined the art collective Depression Era, as an artist, curator and producer in various exhibitions, workshops and other public events and interventions in Greece and abroad. Since 2015, she has been working in the field of cultural management at Onassis Stegi, curating and coordinating the Talks & Thoughts program, which consists of discursive, artistic and inter-disciplinary events, inviting artists and intellectuals from around the world. During the same time she has been part of the Medphoto team, as a curator and producer in various international exhibitions and cultural events focusing on lens based media and contemporary photography in particular. In her artistic and curatorial practice, she is interested in the dialectic tension between images and text, especially in the context of history, mass culture and the media.
Dimitris Kechris
curator
Dimitris Kechris is a photographer, filmmaker and curator. He holds a BSc in Physics from the University of Athens and an MA in Digital Arts from the Athens School of Fine Arts. His work has been presented at the Benaki Museum, the Byzantine Museum, the Greek Film Archive, the Athens Municipal Art Gallery, the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation, and Galeria Hexagono (Barcelona). He is the co-founder of ALDEBARAN, a platform for photography theory, and a curator of MedPhoto Festival. In 2022 he was awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS. His writings on photography and cinema have appeared in edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals. His first book “The Essay-film and Its Political Aesthetics: A Short Introduction” was published in 2023 by Egokeros Publications (in Greek). His essay-film “Athens, my Love” won the Documentary Award in the National Student Competition of the 46th Drama International Short Film Festival. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Film History and Theory at the Ionian University.
https://dimitriskechris.com/
Elena Ntosa
production manager
Born in 1995, Elena Ntosa specializes in Cultural Productions and Management. With a BA in Cultural Management at the Department of Communication, Media and Culture (Panteion University), she continued her studies in Sustainable Tourism Development through Cultural Heritage, Society, and Environment (Pantheon-Sorbonne University, Paris 1). Since 2015 she is collaborating with cultural organizations, festivals, and teams.
Eleni Pagkalia
texts, press, translations
Eleni Pagkalia was born in Athens in 1973. She studied English Literature at the University of Athens. Since 1993 she has been teaching English and translating literature and cultural theory, while working as a journalist as well. Co-founder of the social/political/cultural web-magazine toperiodiko.gr. She is involved in contemporary dance through companies and festivals. In 2015 she co-founded dancetheatre company Blossom Threes. Recently, she entered the world of photography participating in the introduction of ALDEBARAN – Contemporary Photography Hub www.aldebaran.photo.
Ioannis Markakis
graphic designer
Born in Athens in 1988. He studied design at the Department of Product and Systems Design Engineering, University of the Aegean. Since 2012 he works as a freelance designer and art director in many projects. Having a multidisciplinary approach, he collaborates with studios and individuals for unique results. He participates in exhibitions and conferences about design and its wide range of applications.
www.imarkakis.com
