Featured image: © UNICEF/Greece/Tzortzinis
A rare conversation with media-shy photographer Angelos Tzortzinis, whose photo from Moria refugee camp on Lesbos was awarded Photo of the Year 2020 by UNICEF.
At the dawn of the 2009 European economic crisis, a sizable and intense brain drain developed in Greece. While thousands of young, well-educated, and skilled Greeks were leaving the country in search of higher pay and better social prospects, others decided to stay. Photographer Angelos Tzortzinis was one of them.
In 2004, Angelos had just completed the mandatory military service, and enrolled in Leica Academie for creative photography in Athens without previous exposure to the art. He instantly committed himself to professional photography and cultivated an unprecedented yearning for reading and broad learning. Soon, his pictures began to stand out for their hidden meanings and indirect messages that divert audiences from everyday thoughts about the world, and get them to ask how can we engage with it, and — why not — change it.
Angelos shows me part of a trilogy discussing the refugee crisis published five years ago at the TIME magazine under the title ‘Trapped’. All black and white panoramic film photographs depict stillness; the kind of quiet before the storm. The images make me think how many more adversities can these people deal with before falling to pieces. Graves of unidentified refugees on the island of Lesbos and a closed gate on the railway of the Greek-Macedonian border, near the village of Idomeni where about one million migrants and refugees awaited their transit to Europe. Stillness can also be a sign of hope for a better life.
Even after numerous participations in global photo festivals and many international awards, Angelos doesn’t believe his work is phenomenal. On the contrary, his restlessness is motivation to move his art forward. He explains: “It is naive to search for a happy medium in photography. My criteria for a good photograph is not finding perfection in it. Nowadays, we can all take nice pictures with our high-tech mobile phones and the countless shooting and editing apps. I am interested in the story a photograph conveys.”
Audiences who are looking for Angelos’ feelings in his photographs will have to be persistent. “At the moment of shooting there is an empty space between me, the theme, and the event. I become cynical when looking through the lens. In Libya, I saw dead people piled on the top of each other inside a boat. Until today, I haven’t been able to describe my feelings when on the ground, but I know it’s neither sadness nor anger — it’s a learned distance that I have mastered to maintain, so that I don’t lose my orientation, and I can carry on working until I reach my destination.”
For that reason, Angelos dislikes self-promotion and publicity through his photographs. He doesn’t want to come across as someone who benefits from the pain of others. Although, that would be an outrageous accusation against somebody who has dedicated himself to photography. In his early steps as a photographer, self-financed Angelos travelled to Turkey, Libya, Haiti, and Egypt, only with his backpack and camera. Does he undertake an assignment with the same ease nowadays that he has a ten-month-old son? Angelos replies: “I have done all the things that I have wanted to do without holding off. Now, I assess and reassess the risks before taking off on a mission. In September, when the fire broke out at Moria refugee camp at 2 AM, my wife was the one who persuaded me to pack up and go. She knows I was one of the first photographers to arrive there back in 2015, when only a few tents were set up. I owed it to myself to see the end of Moria.”
A couple of days after Moria burned to the ground, the Greek government opened a new camp on Lesbos, on a former military site — this time with a large police presence in and around. Living conditions in the camp haven’t improved significantly, and the dignity of the residents is renounced in the name of bureaucracy, moral failure, and lack of political will. No less than 10,000 people, including babies and children continue to live in the new camp.
Sincerely speaking, photography doesn’t have the power to cease a humanitarian crisis, but can certainly change the way we perceive things. “This is what photography is for me — the reform of my opinions and perceptions,” says Angelos, and he adds: “An image can be a hotbed of discussion about a crisis, and that is a positive thing.”
Indeed, a picture can awaken consciousness. Often, people are ignorant about what’s happening a few miles away from their home, let alone in other countries or continents. Maybe it takes one, two, or ten images to start questioning. And with people like Angelos this is possible.
But his journey is lonely. “I live in a different context from most people. I spend time in isolation to think. I am continuously in a state of processing problems and searching for solutions. But I don’t expect everyone to be willing to have provocative conversations that they are not feeling comfortable having. That’s why my work addresses a smaller audience — people who are prepared to lose their peace of mind and a good nights’ sleep, over things that matter. My work is much more than a click — it is a painful and time-consuming process,” he comments.
Angelos isn’t a votary of no limits in art. He explains: “Limits build your personality. There’s nothing better than recognising your limits and then crossing them.” His first photography lesson was on black and white photography, and the first picture he took was black and white. English photographer Martin Hampton introduced him to film photography. Today, 80 percent of his work, film or digital, is in black and white. “I interpret the world in black and white. However, the older I get, the more I see the magic of colour,” he admits.
He doesn’t spend excessive time in editing. He strives to get the result he wants from the shooting. He says: “If you find clarity within yourself about what you want, you will need five clicks, not 50.” But Angelos loves to experiment. So, how does he cope with the time and creativity constraints that photojournalism entails? “My best work has originated when I didn’t have deadlines and the project was a personal choice rather than an external assignment,” he says.
Angelos selects his projects based on concerns that are dear to him. He comes from a working-class family which struggled financially, and grew up in one of the poor neighbourhoods of western Athens, among immigrants and refugees. As a child, he had a simple and happy life, but things changed at a very young age with the loss of his father. “I developed a survival instinct. I never allowed myself to make a mistake because I knew no one had my back,” he recounts.
“For me it was natural to document the hardships of Greek people during the 2009 financial crisis (another series published in the TIME magazine), as well as the journeys of the refugees because these topics were not alien to me. All my subject matters touch a chord and awaken past experiences or memories,” he says. As a storyteller, it is vital to build genuine relationships with your subjects, and this can be achieved when you approach them with humility and compassion. “I entered hotel rooms of prostitutes who slept with strangers for five Euros, and when people asked me how did I gain their trust, the answer was simple: ‘I wasn’t an outsider,’” he says.
Categorisation of photography puts Angelos off, as much as style does. “At this particular time in history, I make a living and support my family through photojournalism. But a label won’t stop me from trying new things in photography, even if it means I fail and start all over again. After all, this is the photographer’s purpose: to evolve along with his art,” he concludes.
I came I saw I wrote 