Vasilis Mantas - The Rustling of the Garden

[…] Mandas' series presents itself as a kind of micro-sociology of the contemporary Greek space, urban and suburban, with the garden as both cause and pretext: it traverses habitable courtyards and shady piloti, places where flora survives clandestinely and green rooftops. It demonstrates greenery as an indicator of inequality and class differences, in a society that has fervently adored concrete, perhaps treating it as an element of rigid stability in a country navigating through enduring uncertainties. The private garden, at times a field of experiential care that soothes the gaze and at other times a meticulous decoration or fig leaf of a raw society, thus resembles a multifaceted reflection of our relationship with nature. And if the photographs often contain commonplace views, they have been sampled and representatively captured from the flesh of the Greek body.

Hercules Papaioannou (from the introduction of the book)