Thessaloniki dreaming

Thessaloniki (Salonica, Saloníki, سلانيك, Selânik, Солун, Sãrunã, Selanik etc, and originally named Thessalonike sometime around 315BC after a half-sister of Alexander the Great), Greece’s second largest city and the capital of the controversially-named northern Greek region of Macedonia, lies some 230km (143 miles) north of Volos at the end of a jaunty little three-hour bus ride past a fabulous Venetian cliff top castle and the majestic peaks of Mount Olympus. A busy commercial port city, part modern yet retaining much of its ancient Ottoman, Jewish and even Byzantine architecture, the city and the area around it offers many ideas for possible borders projects. In 1903, a group of students from Veles and Kratovo (both now in the other Macedonia, over the international border in FYROM), the so-called Gemidzii, carried out a series of bomb attacks in Turkish and Western companies in the city and are believed by many to be the world’s first suicide bombers. Anyway, apart from being lots to think about, all of this has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that a few days ago, realising that my temporary stay in Greece might possibly turn into something a little longer and that I haven’t really been getting too involved in the country (or for that matter in the photographic history of the country) I started looking into things. Living in something of a backwater, a quick session typing variations of the words photography and Thessaloniki (the closest big city) into Google revealed that the only photographic museum in the country can be found there. Also wanting and needing to further my investigations into lighting and failing to turn up any photographic shops in Thessaloniki using Google, I thought I’d email the museum to ask them about shops. To cut what’s already looking to be a long story short, I got from them the name of a street in Thessaloniki famous for its photographic shops and decided a trip to the city was vital. So, after the aforementioned jaunty bus ride I emerged yesterday lunchtime from the huge spaceship that is Thessaloniki’s main bus station, map in hand, and heading for the street in question, Venizelou. It turns out there are two decent photographic shops on the street, the smallish and imaginatively named Fotovision at Venizelou 15 and the beautiful beast on three floors at Venizelou 42 that is Kochelakis. Horrified at the price and mind-boggling choice of professional lighting equipment as well as everybody’s personal opinions on what I really do need to get, I picked up a few brochures, had a couple of enlightening conversations, felt like a dirty old man in a cheap Soho peep show as I passed a glass cabinet full of Hasselblads, and headed to the port and the photography museum thinking about how useful it’d be to have a database of good photographic shops all over the world that can be easily accessed on a mobile phone (does one exist already I wonder?). Located inside an old port building that also contains the city’s museum of cinemaphotography, I slipped into the main entrance past three Albania builders hard at work on renovating the downstairs toilets and found a completely empty gallery staffed by a man behind a counter and busy café full of people with interesting hair next door. The museum website gives the distinct impression that the museum has a permanent collection, but the reality is, so the nice man behind the counter told me, that they only put on temporary shows and I’d arrived right in the middle of two of them. There were however a number of books for sale, which I flicked through, finding some good stuff, jotting down a couple of names for future research (I was particularly taken by the Greek photographer with communist leanings Spyros Meletzis who took thousands of wonderful black and white photographs during the Greek Civil War of 1946-1949. After a mineral water in the café (see the photograph from the previous post) I headed back to the bus station via the central market (see above), where I took a few pictures on my Nokia, notably of butchers. There’s something truly intriguing about butchers and their goods, and when you’re already thinking about war, and how ordinarily warm, docile men such as the charming butchers of Thessaloniki can be turned into cold killing machines when it comes to feelings of national pride etc, you do start to fantasise about such interesting border-related projects like a series of portraits of butchers living on either side of an internationally sensitive border. Other interesting dreams to come out of my trip to Thessaloniki included the outrage-driven idea of creating a Greek National Photography Museum in Volos (why not? It’s more central than Thessaloniki and there seems to be plenty of great local photographers both past and present whose work could liven up the walls) and a project Antrim would certainly be interested in, working title Second Light, inspired by mixed thoughts on the extraordinarily beautiful quality of Greek sunlight and how it could be used to charge batteries via photovoltaic cells that would in turn run a photographic portrait studio run entirely on renewable energy. Oh, and among the leaflets I picked up earlier in the day at the photography museum are a couple relating to Greek photography competitions. Those interested should take a look at www.citynights.gr and www.photobiennale.gr. I’m sure there are many more, and I hope to get more proactive in this area and to bring further news as time progresses. My Easter project remains on the back burner until later this week when I’ve got a better idea of exactly where I’m going to be over the next four weeks.