[D]uring my photo walks I often find myself in front of the traces of human absence. Remnants that have a story to tell, each one of them, but in the end it all come to speak of who we are. It is a story about the human race.

Q&A with Stavros Stamatiou

Photography is:

Photography is the tool that allows me to talk about myself while I am talking about the world around me. It is also a pretext that motivates me to observe things that usually remain unnoticed.

Photography and writing:

Personally I prefer the pictures to be able to stand alone. In documentary photography the writing has a meaning, it is substantial to provide the information that the pictures cannot. However I notice that many art photographers use text to support their portfolios.

Who left the biggest impression on you? 

The early work of Giorgio de Chirico, the paintings of Salvatore Dali, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and most of the Magnum photographers, especially Trent Parke.

Tell us a little about yourself 

I consider myself a purist. I use the little pieces of reality to make my own world. I take pictures of everything that catches my eye, not following a specific project. When the time comes, some of them are capable to create effortlessly a meaningful body of work. I feel mostly attracted to the surrealism of everyday life and the poetry of ordinary things.

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Stavros Stamatiou (www.stavrosstam.weebly.com), born in Kozani, Greece, in 1965.
I entered the magical world of photography in 1985. Today I live in Perea, a suburb of Thessaloniki, and work as a teacher in the public sector. I attend workshops and seminars that deal with art and photography and I study the work of other photographers from books or the internet. What I mostly like is to be out there, sharpening my vision and creating my photographic world in an almost daily basis.

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