Yiorgos Depollas - On the beach

"In the narration of Giorgos Depollas":

Flipping through the album with the Beaches, it is certain that at some point the reader will smile. He will have realized that the dark aura surrounding the bodies of the bathers signifies their sanctification, their transformation into characters of a very personal fiction. He will have understood that Giorgos Depollas, with these photographs, does not describe situations but tells stories, smiling himself.

For those who have followed the work of Giorgos Depollas, his smile holds special significance. First of all, because the faces in the Beaches are his beloved faces. They are connected by a long-standing relationship, which one could say dates back to the early 1970s, the time when he began photographing them, looking them in the eyes and listening to their stories. Thus, he began to learn about them, observe them, and gather significant photographic material that was eventually presented in the thematic sections "Lonely People," 1979, and "Portraits," 1980. They were the people he met while traveling in the countryside, in small provincial towns and villages. Couples embracing, men lost in their thoughts, faces sometimes stern and sometimes sweet with a smile that seals their encounter with the photographer