"In...Between" - Photography Exhibition and Presentation of Vassilis Manikas Photo Album at ifocus Gallery-Moments Collective

In Between

iFocus Photo Gallery is very pleased to present on Saturday 30 March 2024 at 19.00 the Solo photography exhibition and the photo album, "In...Between", by Vassilis Manikas curated by Dora Lavazou.

@Vassilis Manikas

Vassilis Manikas is a Greek photographer. He was born and raised in Larissa. He has been an active photographer since 2008. Over the past decade he has been living in Athens where he has been actively involved in the fine art photography scene through photo projects, seminars and exhibitions. For him, it all starts from the belief that nothing is just what it

seems. Everything has deeper, multiple and changeable levels of existence and reality. Ourself is no exception. Producing realities through Photography, he tries to discover them and himself who creates them, projecting him into images of the outside world, a separation which, in fact, does not exist. For this reason, his photographic approach is anthropocentric, in search of man or... his absence.

Paraphrasing the words of the great photographer Ansel Adams, his photographs “carry” all the images he has seen, the books he has read, the emotions he has felt, his thoughts, the people who have influenced him and all his experiences up to that moment.The photographic process works largely subconsciously because that is its nature. It is not required to evoke emotion in him. It is necessary, however, to cause him “tension”, the tension someone feels when he imperceptibly realizes he has been connected to the

secret structure of the world.

@Vassilis Manikas

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When he photographs, he isolates himself from the outside world and at the same time feels connected to what surrounds him. It is a curiously contradictory, inner and mystagogic process, which has gradations and levels. The internal, constant dialogue with the self stops and he is connected to the whole. It essentially bypasses the conscious level that creates the illusion of separating the inside from the outside.

His photographs are created precisely by this feeling. He is not necessarily looking for the glaring theme, but simple everyday scenes-stories that happen all the time around and get lost in a moment’s time. He believes that photography can “shout” but above all it must imply. Everything he says is there for him. In what it whispers...

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Curator and Founder of ifocus Gallery, Dora Lavazou says:

''The photographer Vassilis Manikas emerges from his photo album “In Between” as a man wandering around timeless landscapes.

He delves into thoughts concerning not only the human condition, but also existential questions that torment every thinking human being, carving with his lenses a personal photographic path and leaving behind a trace of his artistic development. The ten-year course through his photographic and personal wandering has taught and made him realise that time cannot be linear in a straight course from Eden and the Fall to the day of Judgement and the End of the World. Besides, both Chaos and Quantum theories clearly

@Dora Lavazou,Curator/Founder,of ifocus Gallery,Athens Greece.

state that there is no straight line in nature. There are not any simple straight lines. How can thus Time be solely linear? How could something as abstract as Space-time be a straight line when nothing can be anticipated as utterly linear.

Manikas, just as another Theseus struggling to escape from the Labyrinth, unravels the thread of Ariadne through circular paths focusing his camera on the “now” while his gaze and mind are occupied with:

Is there Time?

Is there a space where Time does not exist?

Is there an in-between Time?

Can photographs belong to Eternity?

@Vassilis Manikas

He immerses in mental quests and mystical suggestions in order to understand the Whole and overcome all the above and everything considered difficult and impenetrable to thought and the photographic language. Believing that everything is part of the Whole and that all stem from, directly or indirectly, the highest level of Metaphysical Hierarchy.

On the other hand, modern science, particularly Quantum theory, the theory of Chaos, Fractals and in part the theory of relativity claim that Time, as we measure it daily, whether we chase it or it chases us, can simply not exist. At least not in the sense we have learnt to attribute it with''.

@Vassilis Manikas

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Time does not exist. Seemingly paradoxical, however, Quantum theory claims that in reality there is a limit that we cannot break through inside the discernible Space-time. Thus, not only is Time not absolute, but in addition it cannot necessarily be a continuous element.

Somewhere among all these the photographs taken by Manikas, the layout of the photographic album, which is double sided, in the form of two covers, as if they were two different books, separating as such colour from black and white prints, invites us to “read” it as if floating in a river, where Time and Space meet the energy of the Universe. There, in an in-between space, where the photographer moves and comoves.

Location: iFocus Photo Gallery Akadimias 57 & Ippokratous 13, inside the "Opera" Lodge

Opening: Saturday 30 March 2024, at 19.00

Duration: March 30 to April 10, 2024

Hours: Monday - Friday 19.00 - 21.00, Saturday & Sunday 18.00 - 20.30

Part of the photos will be presented at the Photography exhibition coordinated by iFocus in the context of the 15th PHOTOVISION 2024 & IMAGE+TECH Expo, which will take place on April 5 – 7, 2024 at the “Closed P. Faliro” Exhibition Center (Tae Kwon Do), co-organized by FOTOGRAFOS magazine and the Be-Best company while it is under the auspices of SEKAF.