Athos: The Colors of Faith
Exhibition of photographs by Stratos Kalafatis
Curation: Aphrodite Economidou and Enrico Debandi
January 8-31, 2016
Sala Giubileo – Filoxenia, Riva III Novembre 9, Trieste
Tuesday – Sunday: 15.00 – 19.00
Monday: closed
Admission is free
After a successful showing in Turin, you now have the chance to see this exquisite series of photographs from Mount Athos in Trieste.
“Men are not born on the Holy Mountain. They are drawn to Athos by their faith, their need, their curiosity, or their desperation. There, initiated into a life of asceticism, they uncomplainingly take their turn in a relay race to death whose finishing line is a place in the ossuary of the monastery. The same race in which the baton has been passed for a thousand years from abbot to elder and monk to novice without distinctions. Because Monasticism is earned, not inherited, in this test of patience.
I don’t really know what brought me to the Athonite Republic in January 2008. It might have been the constant encouragement of my friend and colleague, Arsenios, a graduate of the Athonias Academy, or perhaps a decision to test my conviction that this was not a place you could assimilate in photographs. There was no particular starting point – I’d already reached the half-way point in my life, in my images, in my relationship with the Holy Mountain I’d been visiting since the late Seventies.
I returned from my first trip to Karyes and the Athonias Academy rapt and secretly happy with what I knew was still to come. The 25 journeys and 200 days and nights that followed would set the tenor for a good part of the next five years.” (From the artist’s preface to the catalogue)
Stratos Kalafatis was born in Kavala in 1966. Today he lives in Thessaloniki, photographs, teaches and organizes activities related to creative photography. He has completed long-term photo projects, such as “Archetypal Images,” “Diary 1998-2002″, “Saga,” “the Archipelago” and “Athos – The colors of faith.” His books Archetypal images (1999), Omonia 2000 – Travel to the Navel of Athens (with writer Philip Philippou – 2000), Diary 1998 -2002 (with foreword by Christian Caujolle – 2004 ). www.stratoskalafatis.com
Catalog: Agra Publications, 216 pages, introduction by N. Xydakis
Information: afrodite.contact@gmail.com
Under the auspices of the Greek Ministry of Culture, the Greek Embassy in Rome, the Region of Piemonte and the City of Turin, sponsored by Minoan and Aegean Airlines.
