Photo: Spyros Staveris

Spyros Staveris: 1980-2020: A visual history of contemporary Greece

In Walter Ruttmann’s film about pre-war Berlin, a train speeds through the suburbs before arriving at the main station. It is early in the morning and the city, newly awakened, will soon find its usual rhythms and multiform movement until night falls again.

A similar mural, but one that extends in time and reflects the transformations of a city and its society, will be formed in the case of Spyros Staveris’ photographic archive – a mural composed on its own, without a blueprint, through the accumulation of images that emerged from personal wanderings and various collaborations with publications. Like a mosaic created digit by digit, or like an elevator that incessantly lifts you from the lower social strata to the higher ones and vice versa, the life of Αthens unfolds through its tangled kaleidoscope: old-fashioned and modern at the same time, carefree and troubled, resigned and rebellious, optimistic and with zero prospects.