Landscapes, People – Narratives of Loneliness, by Paris Sigalas

From Tuesday, September 2 until Sunday, October 26, Symposion Cultural Center in Megalochori hosts the solo photography exhibition of Paris Sigalas, titled “Landscapes, People – Narratives of Loneliness.”

Paris Sigalas is internationally renowned as one of the leading figures of Santorini wine, founder of Domaine Sigalas and today the driving force behind OENO P winery. Beyond winemaking, he has always nurtured a deep connection with the arts, and through photography he expresses another dimension of his creativity.

As the artist himself describes:

*“There are landscapes that absorb me, that awaken in me a sense of loneliness with an existential dimension. When I look at them, I sink into a vast serenity, feeling that I dissolve and identify with them. Like a mute sensation, a fleeting liberating release from the finiteness of life runs through me. Everything becomes still, immutable, timeless. A sweet death?

And people, through their movements, their actions, their thoughts, their experiences, their gaze, their expression, they also reveal a unique loneliness. In a single look, one may perceive the dignified acceptance of the end of time, the unalterable law of nature and life. I try to capture this loneliness, to hold it still, to take it out of the flow of time, to ‘save’ it from what the next moment will bring, transforming it into something else. I see a mysterious connection between these two forms of loneliness.

Perhaps their common thread is the fatalistic acceptance of situations that overwhelm the individual, with no escape from them. And Photography? At the very moment you press the camera’s button, it feels as though you switch off the world and everything stops moving. Time freezes, becoming an eternal instant. Is this the ‘little death’ that Roland Barthes described in relation to photography?”*

It is open to visitors daily (except Mondays) from 10:00 to 19:00, with free admission.