There is a lot to be said about Greece these days. It has, in the last year or so, taken the biggest blow from the financial collapse generated in the US and its politics are fragile. But Greece is much more than a country battling for its economical survival and its place in the common European market. It is much more than a population disappointed by its political class. Geographically, the Hellenic nation sits in between the old christian Europe and the unstable Muslims nations. Mediterranean by birth, it is the country that has taught democracy to all of us while experiencing some of the most intense historical upheavals. It has directly witnessed and endured the birth and death of many empires and experience the constant tug of war between the Eastern , Middle Eastern and Western cultures . If there is one country that has experienced Europe at its fullest, it is Greece.
This is where, in 2006, Valentine Karamanoli, ex photo editor at Issaris Press and Panagiotis Maravelis decided to created the photo agency Invision. The concept was to create the first photo agency in Greece to purposely seek out and represent young photographers who have a novel approach to photojournalism and documentary photography. The agency is purposely small, they have no more than 10 photographers, because the owners put close relationships above all. They want to have the time and resources for a constant and productive dialogue with the photographers they represent. In a time of mega agencies whose only relationship with photographers is the occasional royalty check, Invision seeks the out and pursues the human element. “Most of our photographers focus on long term projects or close looks on areas of the planet that provide social, political or environmental interest either positive or negative” says Valentine Karamanoli. Thus the need to support their work and effort, as they face multiple obstacles in the process of finishing them.
Invision offers us, for the first peek into their agency, the work of Gerasimos Koilakos who was born in 1976 in Athens and joined Invision in February 2010. He studied photography at the Leica academy in Athens. After graduating he became involved in documentary photography traveling to Japan, Bosnia and Turkey as well as working on social issues in Greece focusing on the Greek crisis. His work has been published internationally in Panorama, Le Figaro, Der Spiegel and Newsweek among others. This work is on the Perama Shipyards, once the pride of the legendary Greek ship building industry and currently hardly hit by the economic recession. Only a few ships are being built here, down from the 1990 when there were 15,000 people in these yards. At the time, The shipbuilding supported 700-800 other companies. Today, many of the men here have worked only 20-30 days at most in the last two years.
