Zoe Hatziyannaki (b.1976, Athens) studied photography in Kent Institute of Art & Design,) and completed her MA and her practice-based PhD in 2010 in Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work has been exhibited in UK and Greece. Her main interests involve ways of collaboration between photography and theory in spatial research. She currently works as a freelance photographer in Athens, Greece.
In this series of diptychs Secrets & Crises the images on the left portray straightforwardly public buildings in Athens. The images on the right are enlarged window details taken from the buildings’ photographs. The juxtapositions of the two images seek to suggest the questionable role of the State and its institutions today in Greece. The blown-up, poor quality images play a disturbing role. They are in a way scrutinizing the rather ‘innocent’ image of the building on the left, in order to find evidence of what or who is to blame. Hinting that the lives of those buildings are not so organized and tidy, that they have secrets and obscure operations responsible for generating feelings of suspicion, resentment and fear, all of which are met at present in Greece.
