GEORGE DIGALAKIS

My first contact with photography was back in 1974, when I received a “Nettar” as a gift from my father. Since then, the camera became an integral part of my daily life. But it was only in 2009 that I found the necessary free time to study photography seriously. I became acquainted with classic and contemporary photographers and realized this medium would offer me a getaway from reality and enable me to express my inner world.

I am inspired by an idealized nature, which suits my melancholic and introverted character; a nature without any distracting elements, serene, and beautiful, born from my love of silence and solitude. Born in a country with more than 1000 islands, I developed a close relationship with the sea early in my life, and I feel that this connection is the driving force and inspiration behind my love for waterscapes. On an art level, minimalism, both as an art movement and as a philosophy of life, has influenced my work and I have been influenced many minimalist photographers.

What I’m trying to achieve with my photography is harmony, balance, and emotions. I favor long exposure because it allows me to introduce the dimension of time and to create a dreamy atmosphere in the sky and the water. I also remove color from my images, as I find it extraneous to the essence, and focus on the main building blocks of photography: shapes, lines, forms, and tones.

My next photography project has title “Fear of the Dark”, a project with a prominent film-noir style. The images frame people during the night, but also depict everyday activities in places with low light such as the underground or small, dark chapels. The idea and inspiration for this project came from Iron Maiden’s song with the same title: “And when I'm walking in a dark road ……… I have a constant fear that something's always near Fear of the dark, fear of the dark I have a phobia that someone's always there ….”

“Long Call” – The story behind the image. It’s taken in the island of Thassos in 2016. Arriving at the location I noticed a woman sitting at the end of the pier, talking to his mobile phone. As I shoot long exposures, it is very unusual for people to show on my images, so I didn’t expect it to be a problem. I started preparing my gear – tripod, filters etc., when she came toward me, still talking to her phone and asked politely if she was disturbing me. I answered that everything is ok and there is no problem at all, so she returned back to her position in the far end of the pier continuing talking to her phone for the whole time of the exposure and the noise reduction process (almost 10 min). Since she stood almost immobile, this is one of the rare cases people appear in my images. This is the reason I named the image “The Long Call”.

In 2020 I was one of the 6 photographers included in the documentary series “Hunters of Eternity” for the Greek television. I would also like to mention the First Prize and Gold Medal in Fine Art Category In “Px3 Awards”, Paris 2020.

I’ve just published my second book “In Praise of Shadows” and I’m now preparing my next personal exhibition in Athens later this year. It will include images from 2 of my favorite series – “Whispering Lakes” and “The Shape of the Trees”. On a more creative level I would like to continue on the spirit of my project “In Praise of Shadow”, doing again something out of my comfort zone.

"Do I dare, Disturb the Universe?"