1. Where are you from and where are you living right now?
I am from Greece and i live in a beautiful suburb a few kilometers off the centre of Athens.
2. Does the place you live in affect your art and practice?
Even though my city, and especially my neighborhood, are beautiful, with Athens being full with culture and art, i would say that no, it does not affect my photography. I think that an artist can create anywhere in the world, even if he/she lives in the Himalayas, in the Mediterranean, or enclosed in a small room. So I believe an artist is not affected at all by where he/she lives.
3. How does being a female photographer influence your work? Do you encounter any challenges in your practice related to that?
Good question. Lately I have been researching a lot about women in art. Not only in photography, but in painting and sculpture as well. I see that the number of women are much less in the art world, compared to men, and I wonder why. I can understand this if it happened two centuries ago, because the role of women was different then. But nowadays?
As for me, I have never encountered any problems with the opposite gender. On the contrary, my mentor in photography is a man to whom I owe very much.
4. Do you want to share something about your body of work? What are you working on right now?
My overall body work consists of a few sections of images. I wouldn’t call them projects. I don’t like projects, and to be honest I hate them. They suppress me. In my life I work following a schedule. Boring. To keep a balance I have left two things out of my program. My personal relationships and my photography. I could never (until now, at least) work on one theme only. I want my fantasy and my eyes to travel everywhere simultaneously. So i decided that the sections into which i would classify my work would simply be verbs. “Feel ”,“observe”, “identify”, “remember”. Verbs that show my frame of mind when I took the picture. Right now I just keep on photographing based on all these feelings that I mentioned. Just new pictures, not projects.
5. How do you get inspiration? Who do you admire?
As I said before, I get inspired from the meaningless and how it will transform into meaningful leaving my personal photographic mark. A glass of water, for example, which is an ordinary object, is an inspiration for me and it’s a challenge to make it into a powerful image. I admire many artists from all arts. Others are known to the public, others are not. I admire those whose artistic presence move me.
6. Do you shoot mostly color or black and white? Why?
For me an artist should not be affected by the presence or lack of color in their creation. Color is just a detail. I photograph both in color and black and white. I decide the photograph to be in color or black and white after I see it on my computer. Then, some photographs are “talking to me” about being in color and others in black and white. Once again, we should not focus on the detail, it is just the wrapping. The essence lies on the content of the photograph.
Follow her work here: http://eirinilachana.com
All images and texts are protected by Copyright and belong to the Artist.
