Views From Expatria
Photographing Place & The Self In Transience
Dr Ioannis Galanopoulos-Papavasileiou
Abstract
Views from Expatria: Photographing Place and the Self in Transience examines global trends of migration and the complex politics of border assertion and control. Expatriates, transient skilled workers, within today’s ease of workforce mobility face the peril of unrooting from the place they could call “home”. Frequent transits, common for expatriates, are associated with the social, political, and psychological experience of leaving one’s home for another place. Views from Expatria reveals through images the social, political and psychological complexities associated with the global phenomenon of expatriation. Using contemporary photography as a methodology, venturing in an expanded field of migrations beyond the concepts of forced migration and refugee displacement argues that expatriation has an impact on the identity of the expatriated individual. Through five series of place related photographic work; Out of Place; Home-No Home; Interiors; Photographing the Unphotographable; and Here There Are Lions the project reassess the ideologies of place representation, mobility, globalization, multiculturalism and identity, highlighting their contents and disconnects and contributing creative parallels to current discourses in society about expatriation, home, belonging, and the transient self.
Methodology
Contemporary landscape photography, Phenomenological and Expanded Creative Practice, Heuristic Introspection, Auto-ethnography, Literature Reviews.
Series
Out Of Place
First Series
Out of Place is the first series of images I created using direct lens based capturing, digital editing, heuristic introspection and bibliographic review to fulfill the research objectives of Views from Expatria : Photographing Place and the Self in Transience.
Home No Home
Second Series
In Home No Home by browsing, appropriating and digitally re-authoring views of my hometown, Patras, I create visual parallels of home, home displacement and attachment, underscoring the social and psychological complexities of nostalgia and longing for home facing the self in-transience.
Interiors
Third Series
Interiors argue in favor of expanding the ideation production & interpretation of fixed architectural structures, as metaphors and symbols of expatriation. The project shows how permanent structures can become emblematic and communicate the social, political and psychological intricacies of expatriation facing the self in transience.
Photographing
The Un-
photographable
Forth Series
The series tackles other factors affecting expatriation and place representation such as environmental conditions and photography’s legislation. It offers creative parallels on the concept of the unphotographable place, and put under scrutiny the validity of the photographic document in conveying inexpressible thoughts and feelings.
Here There Are Lions
Fifth Series
The project lays out an auto ethnographic verofictional telling of my possible imminent migration to an outer space habitat. As the last portfolio of the project, Here There Are Lions contends that the next version of Expatria will be in outer space and that there is no end to being in this ‘place’ of no home.
The
Exhibition
Physical & Virtual 3D exhibition
Given the nature of the project and its objective to illustrate concepts of place representation, expatriation and transience, the exhibition format was planned from the beginning of the project to have an online virtual exhibition component, with an aligned, dedicated website. This format was better fitted to my expatriate identity and my lived experiences.
Exhibitions-
Conferences
Exhibitions & Conferences 2017-2021
I presented my creative output in various exhibitions and conferences world wide thought the course of the study.
