Life Narratives
Nikos Markou places this project at the intersection between discourse and image. It is a contemporary photographic series based on an audiovisual work, which seems to engrave history: the portrait sits still as we listen to each person’s life story, or an extract from it. In this juxtaposition between the flow of the story and the stillness of the face, there emerges a personal story that is part of the political and social life of Greece: glimpses from the crisis, from the life of immigrants, from the hardship that people have had to endure, ways of living, of loving, of getting married, of growing up. This is not a political piece, or was not meant to be. However, it seems as if the portraits dilate and become part of an image: histories into history and faces into portraits. In this oscillation, the stories and the people matter for as long as the viewer is there to observe and participate. Then they shall fall into oblivion, just like the faces and the words of people one has never met, and probably never will meet. With Life Narratives (2012-14), Markou touches something very private – as if one is looking at a family album with him – and at the same time something extremely public, a great part of Greece itself.
By Edge of Humanity Magazine, October 3, 2017