07:00 – 15:00 | Michalis Patsouras

Info

Artist

Michalis Patsouras

Curated by

Panagiotis Pappas

Coproduction: Photometria International Photography Festival

Collaboration: Consulat Général de France à Thessalonique, Institut Français de Thessalonique

Opening: Monday, 16 October, 20:00

It’s the working hours of the Greek Public Services. Until recently the dream of almost everyone in Greece included a position, anywhere, in the Greek public sector, as the best prospect for a steady salary and a sense of security and permanence. It happened to me as well, without ever seeking it, and for ten years I learned what Greek Public Services are about. Grey spaces, halfhearted rhythms, seas of paper from which the leviathan of bureaucracy would emerge daily to drown any sign of human creativity. People feeling exhausted, not by tiredness but by the relentless daily routine, which could be a little less unbearable if this whole mechanism somehow worked after a reasonable fashion. People working together, dreaming, celebrating, feeling bored, looking for the meaning inside all this and often for the emergency exit.

My intention was never to expose my ex colleagues, but rather to capture their lives and daily routines. So, to observe and to record is what I do and as luck would have it my work is being treated as a socio historic document, now that the public sector in Greece is treated as the scapegoat of the crisis. European and local bureaucrats have deemed that sanitization of the public services will open the road for economic growth and reform of the country. No matter the case, Greek people’s dream for a place in the public sector are crumbling and the foundations of this dysfunctional mechanism are shaking. For what the future may bring, we await…

Resume

Α professional photographer based in Athens, he worked before for 10 years as a civil servant at the Greek Ministry of Commerce, while studying photography and video art at the schools Focus and the Leica Academy. In 2000 he resigned in order to dedicate himself to photography. He works with magazines and advertising agencies, while he has also been involved in travel reporting. He is pursuing long-term anthropocentric projects, focusing on contemporary social issues in an experiential way. From 2017 to 2021 he taught at Leica Academy.

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