Night Walks in Athens
Posted: August 13, 2012 Filed under: Essay, Photography | Tags: Athens, cities, Greece, night, travel, urban landscapes, walking 1 Comment »Past midnight in a poorly lit alley near Metaxourgeio, a man approaches me pushing an overloaded cart. I’m taking photographs. No one else is around. What time is it? he asks. I say I think it’s a quarter past, and he nods and points to his cart. I sell all this, and now I pack up and go home, he says, I do this every day. Where are you from? I ask. I’m a Kurd, he says, I’m from Iraq. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a green sprig. Smell it, he says, pushing it into my face. Take it and smell it. It sounds like an order, and I do as he asks. The plant is basil, and in that dark alley, it smells wonderfully fragrant. He smiles when I recognize the plant, then nods. This is what I sell, he says. And saying nothing else, he walks away, leaving me with the fragrant sprig of basil. I keep it as a good luck charm, because this night I’m still not sure what parts of the city I’ll walk through, and what protection I will need.
On the following night, I learn a couple of days later, in the same area, around the same time, an Iraqi immigrant is stabbed to death by five unknown attackers.
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For additional photos, see the earlier post, “Athens at night.”
All images copyright 2012 Ranbir Sidhu.
The City Painted, part one
Posted: August 8, 2012 Filed under: Photography | Tags: Athens, cities, graffiti, night, photography, urban 1 Comment »One thing is impossible to escape on arriving in Athens, that in much of the center, and even in large areas in the outlying parts of the city, the walls are covered in graffiti. For block after block, every available space within hand’s reach is spray-painted, and the walker swims through it, drowns in it. This must have been what New York City looked like in the seventies and eighties, a city exploding in color and angst and undirected rage. As I’ve been walking and photographing, it leaves me with mixed emotions. Often, very beautiful buildings are tagged, and their facades marred. The National Archaeological Museum is largely covered with quite ugly-looking political statements. Much of it, however, is beautiful, striking, and compelling, and in the teeth of this crisis, it seems necessary that disempowered youth should take their visions and protests and fears and hopes and whimsies directly to the walls of this ancient city. Where else are they going to leave their mark these days?
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Athens at night
Posted: August 3, 2012 Filed under: Photography | Tags: Athens, night, photography, urban landscapes 2 Comments »Walking the streets at midnight, the city is almost silent. Seedy, hot, alive in the shadows, it is a different city from the city in the day. All that empty space somehow lets it breathe.
Please click on the images to view them full-size.
All photos copyright Ranbir Sidhu.
