Page 17 - WTP Vol. V #4

Athens, December 2012
photograph
information that connects the pictures with the real scenes, the situations, and the
events they were born out of, the photographs imperatively call for our interpreta-
tion. They expect us to bring the ghosts back to reality, to rationalize the impos-
sibilities they depict. The challenge is unrelenting, recurring and invariably leading
to a dead end. And it is exactly this inability to explain them which lends them the
poetic dimension that marks Kourakou’s work. In her photographs, even when de-
piction is complete, the intention to photograph this or the other subject remains unfathomable. Nevertheless, details of faces, remote gures, landscapes or indoor
spaces shot from different angles are assimilated into a concrete form of photo-
graphic approach. Kourakou entered the eld of photography totally unprepared,
without having studied it, her only weapon being her unquenchable curiosity about
the shadow of things, about ‘something other than reality’ that lurks in her sub-
jects, and seems to be hiding behind the surface of their photographic representa-
tion. Without prede ned rules or speci c pursuits, the process of photographing
things yields unanticipated aspects, which guide the photographer to an incessant
quest of the unseen.” –Costis Antoniadis 8
“Looking at Antigone Kourakou’s photographs, one fully perceives the sug- gestive range of photographic abstraction. Although there is scarce visual