Bridging Cultures
“The history of mankind is a constant and desperate survival battle that has being going on for a few million years. Wars, genocides, poverty, hunger, diseases, enslavement, racism, ideological and religious fanaticism are finally summed in the relationship between the powerful and the weak. This relationship is in indissoluble synergy with natural disasters, climate change, the search and possession of vital space, the exploitation of natural resources, the combat operations, the removal, deportation or extermination of the other.
The photographic work of Katerina Kalogeraki “Bridging Cultures/Ordinary People” concerns elderly people that were forced to leave their countries and their cultural environment and settle in Great Britain. Katerina undertook a systematic and simultaneously penetrating study, selecting a number of multicultural areas in North North and South London, but also her native Crete. The work was carried out deliberately on the borderline between the 20th and 21th century, from 1999 to 2002. Katerina approached them, listened and recorded their stories and composed in her work the picture and the summary of their lives in a single functional form. The result – systematic, difficult and time consuming research which is at the same time of considerable morphological and conceptual quality– signifies a particular case in the visual context of Greek (and not only), photography.
Consistently following the humanistic approach that characterises her previous work “My Father’s Land“ (1987-1999), Kalogeraki addresses the subject with respect without submitting to the contemporary and voracious voyeuristic gaze that is interested in the shattered lives of others”.
Dr Nikos Panayotopoulos (extract from a review regarding an exhibition in 2015 – see poster).
