This month’s featured artist is ziskar. A street photographer from Europe!
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Full name.
Zisis Kardianos
City and country where you live.
Zakynthos (island in Ionian Sea), Greece.
How you started with street photography?
I was hooked by street photography almost from the beginning. Long time ago I bought a bold monograph of Henri Cartier-Bresson and I was immediately fascinated. Next thing I did was enrolling to a photography school and studied the basics for two years. It was during my studies where I did my first real project in the old horse-racing track of Faliro in Athens (Ganian) mixing a classic reportage approach with the attitudes of a street photographer.
Why street photography?
Because after several disheartening attempts to work on portraiture and staged photography, I realized that I was only getting a real kick out of being in the streets and in public events and taking photographs in an intuitive, unplanned way. Perhaps it was the fact that was simply easier, even though that ease doesn’t guarantee that all photos are good, quite the opposite.
What and/or who inspires you?
During the 80’s I was working more or less like in a cell, without having much interaction, either physically or through magazines with what was happening in my country or abroad. In a way I was shaping the path on which I would walk later, with only my intuition and a gut feeling. Then followed a long hiatus from photography that lasted about twenty years and suddenly in 2005 I made myself a “hard reset” and started again from where I left it, but this time with the advent of digital and the internet, I felt I wasn’t working in a vacuum any more. Besides all the books and magazines I kept buying and still do, it was the daily interaction in social media and photography forums with fellow photographers of more or less experience that offered me the greatest inspiration and encouragement to continue.
How often do you go out to capture moments?
I have a seasonal job which unfortunately doesn’t allow me to shoot much during the summer. I’m a winter photographer, and during the winter months I usually take small weekly trips to bigger cities around Greece and the occasional trip abroad, where I have the opportunity to shoot frantically, sometimes for as much as eight hours a day. However, despite the time constraints, I’m managing to shoot a project in my place during the summer, depicting the nightlife of the infamous tourist resort of Laganas, a project not yet fully shaped under the working title “Karnage Strip”. Also when I’m in the island in the winter, I keep myself busy with another work-in-endless-progress which I named “off-season” and part of it has been already exhibited in a solo show in the Athens festival in 2012.
Great that you mention both projects as I wanted to ask you about both of them indeed. Can you tell us more about “Karnage Strip”? How did this project start and where would you like it to take you?
It started more out of the necessity to find a subject at home where I could shoot during the summer and after work. Laganas is a place similar to Cardif where Maciej Dakowicz shot his famous nightlife series, which had inspired my work along the way even though when I started my project I wasn’t aware of it. There is still work to be done and I would like to go deeper into the night and shoot more inside bars and strip clubs. At the end it might find its way into a book either as a single project or combined with the flip side of the place documentation which is “off-season” a series totally different in subject matter, mood and approach.
“Off-season” produces a fantastic visual impact to the viewer, great sense of colors, shapes and objects. How did you start with this project? Do you have an end date for it?
For the same reason which I started the “Karnage Strip”, only this time it was the idle winter months at home which gradually ignited the project. It will end, if ever, when the “Karnage” ends.
What do you look for when you go out on the streets?
Sometimes I will visit a specific place or event with a project in mind. For example when I shot the pictures that comprise the “Still Going” series, I had a pretty shaped idea beforehand and it was also a kind of experiment to make a typology, a series where a certain pattern is repeated under the set constraints of limited time and place. The series was shot in one hour, taking a stroll around a few city blocks. But usually I shoot in a more freewheeling mode, being attracted by the light or the colors, or some absurd situations and the life unfolding in front of my eyes in its different and surprising manifestations. My frames are often filled with people, closed up or in mid distance, never too far away, I don’t use telephotos, I don’t crop. But I also turn my attention to objects and things and the occasional broad cityscape.
Projects seem to be very important for you, why do you think projects are important for a photographer?
They are important to me because they help me to put in some kind of order my disjointedly dispersed work the same way that photography itself helps us to find some order out of the chaos of our lives. In addition, the projects or simply the series I compile are the means I choose to speak about specific things and to enhance the meaning of the individual photographs by putting them together and sequencing them to form a kind of visual narrative.
What difference do you find in your photography and in the way you feel when you go out to shoot with a project in mind rather than freely and deliberately?
Not much difference really, only that I am more focused on the specific subject but I keep my eyes open to anything that happens to come my way. After all, both of these projects and all my other series are informed from the street photographer’s mentality and its modus operandi.
Do you interact with your subjects?
In general I’m not an extrovert person but I have realized that I can easily become one while photographing. It’s like I’m using a different persona or getting out of my skin. Even so, I hardly interact with people, especially before shooting. Sometimes after I have taken the picture I want, I would stick around, spark a conversation and then go my way. I’m not a reporter, neither a “concerned” photographer. I’m only interested how a tiny slice of life can render itself in a two dimensional frame, in an aesthetically pleasing way and ideally carrying a meaning other than the one that it carries in reality.
In your “Karnage Strip” project, how do tourists react to your photography? Maybe they think you’re some sort of reporter for a magazine. Any curious anecdotes?
So far I had no bad confrontations with the tourists even though photographing drunk lads late at night, it can get out of hand. But I’m careful and I use different approaches adapting to the situation. I can be the fly on the wall, or melt with the crowds or just flash someone full frontal. A couple of drinks usually helps to get over my inhibitions. It’s harder to explain what I do and why I am doing it to the bouncers, whether I shoot outside on the sidewalk or inside the bars. Funny enough they are more antsy about me than I am about them.
How do you challenge yourself to improve on photography?
I read about photography, not just street photography, all the time. And I look at lot of pictures every day. I often challenge myself and try to do work outside my comfort zone. I’m not always satisfied with the results. The photos often look sketchy and missing a direction. I also try different shooting techniques. Shooting at dusk or night, using flash and shutter drag, I’m making this sort of experimental, playful series which I aptly call “trials and errors”.
As you pointed out, you’re not always happy with the results, but you embrace it and created a project called “trials and errors”. How do you deal with the frustrations of getting photos that you don’t like?
In fact “trials and errors” is a small working project of which the results however quirky I like. It is different from my familiar style of representing reality without many distortions, in a clear cut way and with a more deliberate composition. However with other attempts I get frustrated often and my reaction is to step back for a while, create some distance and take some time to refresh my batteries.
How would you describe your own style?
I’m not sure I have my own style. I always try different things, I get easily carried away by the work of a particular photographer and try to emulate it in a way. I really never bothered consciously to develop my own voice. Maybe this happens anyway on some deeper level. Out of the diversity of the images I make, people recognize common threads, they recognize me in a way, which is very cool even though I’m always surprised when they say it. I would say that most of my work, which by the way I don’t like to present it as autonomous, stand alone pictures but they are always part of some bigger series or works-in-progress, fall under the wide sub genre of personal documentary. Personal, not in the sense that I focus on myself and my intimate surroundings but in the sense of “keeping some kind of record” of my interactions with people and places in public. Not sure if anyone really cares other than me, but I can accept that and keep on with my job without grandiose plans.
What is photography for you?
This question was partly answered with my previous answer. The description of myself that I use in some social media is that I am “a peripatetic photographer who likes to walk and shoot and sometimes just walk”.
Photography can be so many things. Mostly should be pure joy. Joy to make it and joy to look at it. For me it is also the preferred way to absorb a place, to be there in a state of trance, to compete with my fears and limitations, to connect and to be present. It’s an exhilarating process and therapeutic in a way.
Do you feel is important to publish your work on social media? Why? When you say “keeping some kind of record”, do you mean for yourself or for others?
I mean it primarily for myself. Even if they were not social media I would still do the same because it stems from a creative urge. But social media is a good vehicle to show your work not just to receive some likes but to get some exposure that can eventually lead to invitations for magazine features, exhibitions, lectures or even taking the occasional assignment. All of these have happened to me in the past thanks to the social media. The “Professional amateurs” like most of the street photographers are, don’t easily attract the attention of the “art establishment” and therefore we must invent other ways to disseminate our work and to make it known.
Would you travel without a camera to a new place? Many photographers connect to a new city/place with the camera. It would be interesting to see some photographers without a camera in a new place.
During the last ten years, I have never gone to a place without the intention to take pictures. It would be unthinkable to do otherwise.
What is your personal definition of street photography?
My definition is that street photography relies on a kind of magic convergence of chance and observation and it bets everything on the ordinary. It’s a simple definition which encapsulates the essence of street photography in my opinion.
Through photography, what have you learned about yourself in the last year?
I’m constantly learning or come to accept things about myself which were subconsciously hidden. Photography has helped me to recognize my strengths and limitations. It has also taught me to not get upset or depressed too easily and let myself go.
Fantastic, I know many photographers have learned about themselves because of photography. If you would have to switch to another medium of expression, which one would you choose and why?
It would be video whose expressive potential I value very much. The motivation is the same and that is to capture something real and preserve it, fix it in time.
What are your future goals with photography?
I don’t have any grand plans at the moment just small goals like trying to be more concentrated, responsive and selective when I am out shooting.
If you could have a conversation with ANY photographer for an hour, which photographer would you choose and why?
I would have loved to be able to discuss photography with one of my favorite and not widely known photographers, Philip Perkis. Not only is he a great photographer and a genuine inspiration to me, but he is also a very educated photography teacher. I have Perkis’ excellent monograph “The Sadness of Men” (get it while you can, it is still there and it’s ridiculously cheap!) and in this interview featured in it, he is saying really important stuff with the most unpretentious of manners. I also have the small booklet that he published “Teaching Photography”.
If you could go back in time, what piece of advice would you give yourself to take some shortcuts here and there based on your experience?
I regret for all the years that I wasn’t shooting. Coming closer to the present, I wish I had not taken some early advice that I got from some “teachers” as absolute truths and axioms. Falling under their spell, I became for a long period as dogmatic as they were and that didn’t help me to be more inquisitive and more adventurous with my photography. Time lost twice.
What gear do you use? Philosophy: Digital or analog?
I only use digital cameras now. I find the debate about film vs digital a bit boring and exaggerated. However I do believe that a change of tools can affect the way a photographer sees and even dictate a shift of interest towards other subjects or approaches.
I did most of my older work with a Canon 5D but now I’m using only my precious Fujifilm X-T1 and at the moment only with the 23mm prime (35mm equiv). For what I do, this toolkit is enough and it keeps my bag light when I travel.
B&W or color? Why?
I do both now. This was one of the dogmas to which I was converted before and thankfully I got rid of it. My decision whether to keep a photograph in color or in B&W is based upon the requirements of the image itself. I have no problem mixing color and B&W images in the same book or essay. I have no biases against either but color poses more challenges to get it right and I like that.
I noticed in fact that you mix B&W and color in your “Karnage Strip” project, many photographers find very difficult to mix both and find that it can be a shock for the spectator when observing. How do you manage this? You follow no “rules”.
However unusual that might be, is not a novel idea. I have seen it in many modern Japanese photo books and also on the books of European photographers. JH Engström does it all the time, Morten Andersen also and I find that it works. It is also good to unsettle the viewer by offering something beyond the expected.
What about post processing/developing?
I always shoot in RAW and I keep my post processing at a minimum usually only in the raw converter. The X-T1 is capable of amazing colors right out of the box but the jpeg files it generates can be a bit harsh and over sharpened. For most of my color photos I apply the new Fuji Classic Chrome profile which desaturates the warm hues and softens the harsh blues of the sky.
The selected picture (first photo on top).
This is one of my recent hits. I choose this picture because it exemplifies in the most tangible way my definition of street photography. It’s a fruit of coincidence and observation in equal measure and the subject itself is mundane and ordinary.
Street Photographers on tumblr you truly admire.
There are many and I’m sorry if I don’t mention them all but off the top of my head I really enjoy the photos of Ola Billmont, Johan Jehlbo, Troy Holden and of my mate in Burn My Eye Barry Talis.
What are some other projects you are currently working on?
I’m preparing to launch a self-published, limited edition biannual zine featuring selected photographic essays and series of mine. This requires a lot of prep work but the harder and less fun part of it comes later with the promotion and the distribution.
We’ll be looking forward to that, in the meantime, why don’t you tell us a bit more about the books you have created so far? Your book “A Sense of Place” is out there for the public to get. How challenging is to create a book? Many photographers would love to have books of their work.
It’s very challenging, it requires a lot of preparation, especially if you self-publish and do everything on your own as I did with my first book. Self-publishing now has become the norm for many new and emerging photographers, but when I did mine in 2012 the boom was just starting, so in the sense it was more innovative and risky endeavor then. What compelled me to make that book was the itch to try my hands on something new and exciting and also to put behind me and wrap it up into a book form the work I produced after starting photography again. The book features b&w photographs of my native island seen through the oblique perspective of a street-life photographer.
This interview cannot go without mentioning Burn My Eye (BME) international photo collective. You are one of the founders of BME. What was the main motivation to start a photo collective?
Our motivation was to have a close circle of like minded and trusted peers, who would exchange honest critiques and reviews and help each other develop their work further. Another motivation was to create a platform through which common projects can be assumed and presented with the intention to offer more exposure to the group work but also to the work of the individual photographers. Have all these goals been realized in our collective? My feeling is that they have not to the extent that many members had envisioned but we are making constant efforts to get there.
Where can we find you?
http://www.zisiskardianos.com
http://ziskar.tumblr.com/
https://www.instagram.com/zisiskardianos/
Any advice from your personal experience?
I would say don’t bother too much with gear, try shooting things outside your comfort zone and be very selective with what you shoot and how you edit. Last but not least, enjoy the trip!