[Go Green] Photopolis Agrinio Photo Festival

At the Photopolis Agrinio Photo Festival, in an effort to raise awareness about environmental protection, we asked the ART8 photographic team from Agrinio (Greece) to photograph the areas of the Acheloos estuary. The resulting photographic material was exhibited at the festival. Exhibition curator Photini Papahatzi writes: "Photographing the Acheloos estuary, ART8 photographers, starting from an "unconcerned" photographic walk, wander through the creeks, beaches, sand dunes and islands created by the river's siltation. Gradually they understand and process the landscape as a human construction. They observe the contradictions of the Acarnanian land, documenting the ravages of time, the beauty and the darkness of the influence of the human element. They are confronted with photography itself, no longer as a production of images with aesthetic aspirations, but as a complex cultural phenomenon that conveys not only information but also its social and political components. Biblical landscapes of carefree cows and wild horses alternate with landscapes of abandoned local research centres that once breathed life and vision into the place and now appear to be powerless. They blend into their surroundings as 'landscapes of mistakes'. The “pelades”, small rs from all parts of the world, who confirm that 'the unity of the human species' brought about by globalisation means, first and foremost, that 'there is no place to escape'. On the contrary, the river - the generator of all flowing waters and springs - 'escapes' to the shimmering Ionian Sea, as do the creators to imaginary places that capture their creators' longing for alternative but elusive states of existence".

Photini Papahatzi, curator of the "Acheloos Estuary" exhibition Visual artist - Cultural manager.

More info: Photopolis Agrinio Photo Festival

(General editor: Simon Mundy)