In my series Tears and Saints, I photograph the old religious relics of Byzantium world, decayed by time and neglect.
I photograph the saints and religious icons in black and white forms, from several abandoned old churches located in villages of Corfu , using a combination of digital photography as well as Polaroid.
Tears and Saints seems a departure from the natural world with an exploration of Christian iconography and decay as his subject. The photographs feature traditional and famous depictions of various Christian figures—the Holy Family, John the Baptist—but decayed, warped, and manipulated nearly beyond recognition. The figures shown, cracked and faded, are rendered nearly ghostly abstractions. Despite this embodiment of a vision of the past, the images breathe with an eerie liveliness, as if the subjects inside the photographs are scraping their way out.
“Ιs not the knowledge that makes us approach the saints but the awakening of our tears”
-Emil Cioran
