TO LOVE, FEAR AND CONSUME

There is no better way than street photography to feel the pulse of a society. To weigh collective dreams, desires and nightmares.
With his series , Kostis Argyriadis captures the raw reality of alienation , physical and psychological, induced by modern urban life .
 

“When I realized that I could not transform the system, I used all my energy to prevent the system from transforming me ,” reads the introduction to Oxymoron , a series entirely in black and white by Kostis Argyriadis . The quote, from the writer Chronis Missios, is revealing of the way in which the Greek photographer has taken hold of the medium. Because by confronting his own gaze with the inconsequence of the transformations at work in modern life, he seeks to preserve his freedom, or at least, “the fleeting illusion of it ,” says the artist, who is particularly skeptical. To do this, he adjusts to the rhythm of the city, photographs the extraordinary banality, and excels in this challenging genre that is street photography .
A daily journal of things seen
 

The result of urban wanderings, is an integral part of a larger project, poetically entitled To Love, Fear and Consume . Kostis Argyriadis has gathered “only what is waiting to be captured, loved, consumed” . These things and the people who offer themselves as spectacle are “detached from every aspect of life” , he continues, referring to Guy Debord’s famous work The Society of the Spectacle , which always accompanies him. The author acutely analyzes these images “which merge into a common course, where the unity of this life can no longer be reestablished” .
 

In the same way, Kostis Argyriadis observes this “pseudo-world” , an open-air theater, where life is reversed. Saturated, full of contrasts, these images reveal a reality in tension, made of vertigo and unease.
 

At the heart of an artificial environment that largely absorbs the humanity of its inhabitants, the individual has difficulty discerning the boundary between the space of oneself and that of others. At the same time, he adopts strategies and methods, consciously or not, in order to desensitize himself, and to cut off his own perception of what surrounds him.
 

The relationship he develops with work, effort, pleasure and the body adapts to the ambient social frenzy . To add to the urban chaos and disorder already present in these photographs, Kostis Argyriadis reworks them, and sometimes superimposes them, thus blurring our own gaze.
 

“Get up, brush your teeth, take the elevator, spend money, take the bus, the plane, follow instructions, don’t panic, don’t complain, dance, walk, drive, drink, sleep, repeat… What’s left at the end of each day, in each city, each newspaper, is the same as yesterday.” His dark photos, similar to his words, could almost be considered pessimistic. Faced with the absurdity of the condition of the modern being, spectator of his own daily life, Oxymoron presents itself more as a manifesto , in images, intended to awaken this formidable desire for change that lies dormant in each of us.
 

Written by Milena Ill for Fish Eye Magazine