23 May – 16 June 2013 / Ile de Bendor, Bandol (Sanary-Sur-Mer, France)
The Museum of Photography, Thessaloniki participates for the second time in PhotoMed Festival, by supporting the exhibition of Stratis Vogiatzis “Fishermen”.
www.festivalphotomed.com
Artist’s statement
“I’ve been photographing fishermen in the Mediterranean Sea for the last four years. Recently my projectconcerning fishermen in seven countries in the Mediterranean Sea has been completed. I consider myself very privileged to be spending time with them, documenting their lives, penetrating their world which is so hard and magical and quite different from the people of the land. Sometimes I felt myself engaging in a ritual, while watching all these men, silently, patiently pulling up the nets for hours and feeling that there is more to this than a job to be done. It is more like meditation, a channel that opens and connects them with the eternal secrets of the sea. The fisherman’s existence has in a sense resisted the modern way of life and has kept its traditional spirt in most of its forms. There is no doubt that the fisherman’s toil is one of the hardest; working on fishing boats in the harshest weather conditions often with just two or three hours of rest, sometimes without getting paid at all if they don’t return with fish, away from their families and with no health insurance. As hard as the working conditions are, the bonds they share are incredibly strong. There is no complexity in the life of the fishermen, neither is it hypocritical to say they are exactly what they are. What overwhelmed me the most is the authenticity of their lives and the fact that they are maintaining the same simple, ‘insignificant’ way of living that they have always had. The limited space they share is contrasted by the infinity of the ocean and the harsh conditions of their work are compensated by the freedom they share by living in the middle of it. Very often I felt like a play was taking place in front of my eyes, a play that showed the desperate, primeval need of the people to tame nature, to overcome their weaknesses, confronted by the power of the sea and the demand from her to obey her will. It is my strong belief that “the people of the sea” as Proust called them are the gatekeepers of a world that is totally unfamiliar to us. They know the sea like we know a certain neighborhood in the city we live in and at the same time the sea remains the biggest mystery. Although they know her moods, the winds and the changing currents, they will nevertheless remain foreigners, invading an alien space. Very few young people nowadays tend to live the life of a fisherman, firstly because of the hard working conditions and secondly due to the shrinking possibilities of earning a sufficient wage. To a large extent this is one of the main reasons that on the large fishing boats there are mostly immigrants working, mainly from Egypt. Thus it seems totally acceptable to say that the culture of the fishermen is vanishing. If the young people don’t receive the adequate funds, if the urgent problem of overfishing remains, there is still another more urgent problem: that the beautiful seascape, with small boats traveling gently across it, will cease to exist.”