City of Wherever
It is hard to place myself in the passage through cities too numerous to recognise or remember and whose names I do not care to recall. In their passage through the lens those cities have become the City. At the same time unique and interchangeable, their kaleidoscope rotation through the camera opens new paths following a torn map whose fragments I have collected as I cross shadowy porticoes and bridges in search of new vistas by seeing through walls; drifting across frontiers on trains and ships with a camera as my home.
The City, still as it is in these photographs, still escapes me. It always will, while I am still here, and when I am gone.
But we never run the risk of being truly lost in the City, merely biding our time as we wait, more often unknowingly, to be called forth to testify to its passing and ours. Always a race against the clock to frame before being framed, grazing off the skin of the City as our skin is grazed by its iron, steel, and stone. Invisibility unravels and is brought into light as a thread of images criss-crossing the City, tracing its streets, bridges, and subway lines. The indifference of passing trains to laughter or screams. The silence of photographs.
Pandemicon 2020-2021
This book chronicles my passage through Glasgow, London, Genoa, Milan, and Athens during the ebb and flow of the 2020 - 2021 Coronavirus pandemic.
The wearing of protective masks is the visual motif that connects the overall series and, in a sense, makes those I have photographed citizens of the same city. The intention is to leave a trace of my personal experience of the pandemic as it has affected our shared lives in several European cities. The choice of cities followed the course of my own life during this period as I emerged from full lockdown on the island of Arran into cities that felt very different to my eye after a period of isolation.
As the opportunity has arisen I have made it my purpose to photograph the cities I know best, since these for me seem the most defamiliarised by the pandemic. In addition, Genoa introduced a historical resonance to the series, having been the first West European city to have been struck by bubonic plague in the Middle Ages. Meanwhile, Athens has always been for me a symbol of endurance against the odds, most recently due to the 2008 economic crisis.
The pandemic has affected all of us and all societies. In my case, this suite of photographs is dedicated to my mother, Adamantia Perivolaris (1935-2021), who passed away on 11 January 2021, due to complications arising from COVID - 19.
[Π Press, 2021, 92 Pages, Case Bound, Silk Paper (170 gms)]
Isola
The second part of a three-part suite of photographs and accompanying texts reflecting on the idea of the island as an existential condition. The images were photographed at the opposite ends of Europe, in the Western Isles of Scotland and the islands of the Northern Aegean, acknowledging the fact that my life is defined, respectively, by my family origins in the Greek island of Chios and the Scottish island of Arran, where I now live.
Resonating with the etymology of the word 'island', the series was begun in April - May 2020, in a period of enforced isolation on Arran during the first coronavirus lockdown in the UK. The detachment afforded by living through this period lead me to begin reflecting on the experience of living between islands and on my own transnational identity as an islander and photographer. This has lead me since then to find find parallels between islands at the extreme of Europe to the point where, in this work, they merge to become the Island that defines my experience and imagination as a European.
The first instalment of Isola was published in 2020 and is also available on this website.
The composer, Electra Perivolaris (https://www.electraperivolariscomposer.com/) has based a song-cycle on Isola for a 2023 album project and series of performances, in collaboration with the soprano, Héloïse Bernard https://www.heloisebernard.com/).
Isola
The third part of a suite of photographs and accompanying texts reflecting on the idea of the island as an existential condition. The images were photographed at the opposite ends of Europe, in the Western Isles of Scotland and the islands of the Northern Aegean, acknowledging the fact that my life is defined, respectively, by my family origins in the Greek island of Chios and the Scottish island of Arran, where I now live.
Resonating with the etymology of the word 'island', the series was begun in April - May 2020, in a period of enforced isolation on Arran during the first coronavirus lockdown in the UK. The detachment afforded by living through this period lead me to begin reflecting on the experience of living between islands and on my own transnational identity as an islander and photographer. This has lead me since then to find find parallels between islands at the extreme of Europe to the point where, in this work, they merge to become the Island that defines my experience and imagination as a European.
Isola
Previously only available as a three-part zine series, Isola is now available in its entirety as a book. Isola reflects on the idea of the island as an existential condition. The images were photographed at the opposite ends of Europe, in the Western Isles of Scotland and the islands of the Northern Aegean, acknowledging the fact that my life is defined, respectively, by my family origins in the Greek island of Chios and the Scottish island of Arran, where I now live.
Resonating with the etymology of the word ‘island’, the series was begun in April -May 2020, in a period of enforced isolation on Arran during the first coronavirus lockdown in the UK. The detachment afforded by living through this period lead me to begin
reflecting on the experience of living between islands and on my own transnational
identity as an islander and photographer. This has lead me since then to find find parallels between islands at the edges of Europe to the point where, in this work, they merge to become the Island that defines my experience and imagination as a European.
Isola
A supplement to accompany my three-part zine and book, Isola. The new supplement consists of three new images and 4 further texts and complements the previous publications.
In the Days of Peace
The photographs and text that comprise this zine were produced at the monastery of Nea Moni, on the Greek island of Chios, between 2019 and 2023.
Armistice Day London 2023
Photographs taken in London during the demonstrations of autumn of 2023 advocating a ceasefire from the blanket bombing of Gaza following atrocities perpetrated by Hamas against Israelis on October 7th. A significant feature of demonstrations during this period was that a large proportion of the demonstrators were women, highlighting the increasingly prominent role
women are playing in pro democracy and human rights movements around the world.
Half the proceeds from sales of this zine will be donated to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East: https://donate.unrwa.org . The other half will cover production costs.
Way Out
Figures glimpsed out of the corner of the camera’s eye in several European cities, the sound of their footsteps fading around a corner as they search and sometimes find a way out of themselves.
Numbered Copies
A5
32 pages + Typewritten, stamped insert
200gsm uncoated paper
Frankie Roberston: Sage of the Clyde
Glasgow resident Frankie Robertson is a man of remarkable individuality. This is book of images chronicles my growing friendship with him and the conversations we have had. We first met in the Barras, Glasgow. Since Frankie told me that as soon as he has some money he'll be gone, we decided that it would be a good idea to make some photographs together before he leaves.
An artist, a poet, but above all a mystic and a Cynic philosopher, when we first met, Frankie corrected me when I described him as a shaman, letting it be known that he preferred to be known as a sage. My photographs attempt to record Frankie’s world of intense colours and deep shadows.
One of the photographs here was taken after Frankie attested that everything is `now', including the future and the past; after bearing witness to the fact that sainthood preceded buddhahood. All I know is that, like the Mona Lisa, Frankie cannot be bought nor sold.
City of Wherever
It is hard to place myself in the passage through cities too numerous to recognise or remember and whose names I do not care to recall. In their passage through the lens those cities have become the City. At the same time unique and interchangeable, their kaleidoscope rotation through the camera opens new paths following a torn map whose fragments I have collected as I cross shadowy porticoes and bridges in search of new vistas by seeing through walls; drifting across frontiers on trains and ships with a camera as my home.
The City, still as it is in these photographs, still escapes me. It always will, while I am still here, and when I am gone.
But we never run the risk of being truly lost in the City, merely biding our time as we wait, more often unknowingly, to be called forth to testify to its passing and ours. Always a race against the clock to frame before being framed, grazing off the skin of the City as our skin is grazed by its iron, steel, and stone. Invisibility unravels and is brought into light as a thread of images criss-crossing the City, tracing its streets, bridges, and subway lines. The indifference of passing trains to laughter or screams. The silence of photographs.
AP (1935-2021)
A sequel to Perivolaris's Pandemicon 2020-21. AP (1935-2021) marks the personal cost of the Covid-19 pandemic, to which the photographer lost his mother. Through a combination of family album photographs, diary pages, and his own photographs, Perivolaris presents fragments of his mother's life and his family's experience of migration.