Nikos Liapis

Stereotypes are born out of good reason. And yes, they provide a facile, crude, unrepresentative, narrow-minded way of quenching our thirst for understanding the world and dealing with uncertainty and diversity. They can be however, a unique source of pleasure. If you look beyond them, there is just as much evidence that demolishes the myth and confounds the stereotype. You simply have to look and the delights are yours!

New York City. Tall, cramped, smelly, brash, inhuman.
New York City. City of materialism, excess and greed.
Devoid of spiritualism, inner peace, lightness.
New York City. City of every stereotype that comes to mind.
Or, is it?

Rain drops kissing the water.
Water holding hands with the reeds.
Reeds swaying in the breeze.

Rumour says you’re on your way.
A lifetime of waiting.
For your light,
your warm touch on the skin,
your scent that fills the air.
Rumour says you’re on your way.
To stay.
A lifetime of eternal spring.

Buds at Paradise Fields, Greenford.

Three years ago, I had the incredible privilege of spending a couple of days close to the legendary photographer Terry O’Neill. It was at my work and he had been hired to photograph our people in their work environment for a major brand awareness event. A celebrity himself, the guy has spent the last five decades capturing world-famous photos of every big name you can think of. In real life, I found him approachable, talkative and almost unassuming. The sign of a true master.

I am recounting this not for name dropping purposes but because it was a discussion with one of his assistants that marked me. We were talking about “difficult” photographic fields. I said photojournalism, especially war photography. He disagreed and insisted that portrait photography was actually the most difficult area to “get it right and be different”. Photographing people was his passion and pursuit for perfection. His words stayed with me eventhough I’ve always shied away from taking pictures of people. Too complicated, riddled with potential trouble (nanny state, anti-terrorist/anti-pervert paranoia, you name it…). Since then however, hearing the same opinion from others and seeing the impact of their exceptional work capturing people and their emotions, have softened my views and gave me a definite appetite for portrait photography.

Last weekend, as I was going through my photo archive, I came across some of my few portrait shots. They sparked a chain reaction of thoughts around looking and how a look can convey a million emotions. Elation, love, sadness, comfort, anger, support, doubt, strength, fear, passion, excitement, apathy, disgust, jealousy, nostalgia, desire… Looking or being looked at. On screen, on paper, face-to-face. We analyse, interpret, respond, look back…

Today, I thought it would be more appropriate to let the pictures do the talking. A humble personal attempt to capture a miniscule fraction of the limitless palette of the human soul as seen through my photographic lens. What am I seeing, what are they trying to say, what are they thinking?

Jake, London, UK 

Dreamer, New York City, USA 

 Frankinsence retailers, Muttrah, Oman

Greengrocer, Taqah, Oman 

I was thinking about planes, or rather I was thinking about all the great things that I have experienced thanks to planes. The places discovered, the people met, the bonds forged, the photographs taken, the memories made, the immense joy of wrapping your arms around loved ones at the other end of the sliding customs exit doors at arrivals.

I was thinking about Daniel, the Ethiopian cab driver who picked me up from the airport in Grand Rapids, Michigan one late Monday night after an exhausting 24-hour journey from Athens. He was cheerful and enquired politely where I had flown in from. He got particularly excited about the fact that I had come all the way from Greece. “I have an uncle living in Athens” he said. In my sleep deprived state (it was 7am in Greek time after all and I’d been up since 7am the previous time), I cynically thought here we go: another of those “you come from x-million inhabitant city – I have a cousin/friend/uncle (delete as appropriate) living there – do you know them?”. Well, actually sometimes these questions do work but I’ll have to leave that story for another time!

Daniel instead told me about his father who had lost touch with his brother in Greece, possibly Athens, for more than 10 years. How he had desperately tried to relocate him and how it had been an impossible task due to the lack of an address, of friends or family in Athens, and of spare money for the brother to return to the homeland. I suspected more reasons for the rift between the two brothers but it was still a sad story and it intrigued me. In a bizarre moment of semi-alertness, I asked Daniel if he had that phone number with him so that I could have a look to see if it was an Athenian number and if it was wrong. His face lit up and passed me his mobile phone with the number as he was driving. It did indeed look like an Athens phone but seemed to be missing three digits: 210, the Athens area code. Although this was no guarantee that he had a way of connecting his father with his long-lost brother, Daniel was visibly thrilled and it felt good to help a complete stranger. He thanked me profusely and I asked for one thing in return: that he let me know if the number actually worked. The next morning, I got this message…

Since Friday, I’ve been enjoying a rare event in these parts of the world: winter weather, clear skies and uninterrupted sun. The air is still and frosty but not so cold that it hurts your face if you stay out for more than a few minutes. I regard it as a serious cause of celebration among a couple of others…

To my photographic self, however, it’s the light that touches me the most.  There’s a tone and quality to it that you only get in the North. (Well, after all when you come from Greece, this is the North!!! Eskimos would probably argue differently but hey! it’s all relative in life!) Over here, the sun never gets a chance to rise too high in the sky and stays low on the horizon. The world is lit by oblique, almost horizontal, rays that make you feel in the middle of a set, blinded by incredibly powerful studio lights at your disposal to sculpt the landscape and everything that’s in it. The start and end of the day are particularly photogenic. Banal objects, everyday scenes and activities are magically transformed into works of art ready to be captured by those who see them. Beauty to be found everywhere if you know how to look and how to make it stand out.

Black & white seems to be made for this setup. It’s by admiring some exceptional black & white work in the last few months that I started to truly appreciate the expressive power of seeing the world in monochrome. Colour has always been an obsession of mine and will remain so but black & white is catching up fast! And so it is, camera in hand, that the light of these days has provided some consolation and has gone someway to soothe the longing for then warmth awaiting in the South…

The plain of Urris, Co Donegal, Ireland

Battersea Park, London

 Battersea Park, London

Back in London and on my way home in a black cab. Agonising about what to write today. Overwhelmed by ideas but unable to choose just one. Meanwhile, the head is down as the red light keeps flashing on the Blackberry. I’ve long given up resisting the temptation to jump on it. “This time it will be a nice surprise” – are you kidding? How many “nice surprise” emails do we really get in a day? But do we ever learn?…

I get blinded by a ray of low-lying winter sun and as I raise my head, annoyed, I notice Park Lane, Hyde Park, the sunny afternoon, the pale blue skies…”I love this city”, I say smiling to myself. “I’m so happy to be back”. “What a privilege to live here!” And it suddenly hits me: It is only appropriate that London gets another mention today. A simple one, about the million and one faces of this incredible place. I’ve just written my story!

So here are a couple of my favourite London frames (and judging by the response on my Flickr  photostream, not just mine!). Fleeting moments frozen in time. Unusual, complex, unique, inherently beautiful. Just the way I like it!