CALLIOPE
THE BLUE EYES BEHIND THE CAMERA

Calliope is an internationally acclaimed photographer. She started her career at Conde Nast Italy and later on she moved to New York where she lived for twenty five years. She recenlty returned to Athens in pursuit of cultural and humanitarian causes closer to her heart.

 

Having recently returned to Greece after a 25 year career working abroad in fashion photography, her second book, published in 2014 by Skira, is filled with images of Greece’s youth photographed in locations that seem to be out of time and history — or rather, in a kind of idealised Greece envisioned by Calliope, a vision so pure and close to her heart that it can only be the result of a deep love and of course a certain amount of nostalgia. Captured wearing traditional costumes or flowing Ancient Greek-style tunics and gowns, the book’s subjects are depicted under the relentless light of the Greek summer – a light that, as journalist Nicolas Niarchos writes in the book’s introduction, illuminates Greece’s past, present and the future. To further highlight the connection between the past and present, some of the photographs in the book are juxtaposed with excerpts from the Odyssey, one of the Greek language’s oldest ‘texts’, quoted from a beautiful translation by American poet Ennis Rees.

 

Her book is all about our present, not as an object in itself, but as the result of a process and a certain social dynamic. Creativity and optimism can and will be the drivers to push us forward and help us redefine our self-image on our own terms, all through the younger generation of a confused nation in search of its own voice.