Page 40 - 2BOARD 33
P. 40
BILDUNGSROMAN
Growing
with the city
Nikos Vatopoulos αthens is my city. As a young I would see the old houses and the new
journalist who boy I heard family stories about apartment blocks, and before I knew it,
specializes in the Occupation in the capital. I started taking pictures of the city as it
cultural journalism, Η Αθήνα είναι η πόλη μου. Από changed. At the age of 15 with a camera
at the I Kathimerini μικρός άκουγα οικογενειακές in hand, which today would belong in
newspaper. διηγήσεις για τα χρόνια της a technology museum, I had already
δημοσιογράφος Κατοχής στην πρωτεύουσα. organised my first photographic archive, one that I
με εξειδίκευση would often revert to, not so much to compare it to
στο πολιτιστικό the Building of today as to understand the journey. Cities are very
ρεπορτάζ. εργάζεται National Bank of much like a coming-of-age story, a Bildungsroman. I
στην εφημερίδα Η Greece | το κτιριο τησ have reached an age of maturity, and Athens has also
Καθημερινή. εθνικησ τραπεζασ της changed, ten-fold. I often wonder what this city means
to me, a city that carries a DNA in its urban makeup
40 ελλαδοσ. that is not easily identifiable, and typically difficult to
comprehend. From a young age I was impassioned
by making people fall in love with Athens; those who
did not know the city, those who had experienced
it at the wrong time with the wrong people, those
who were unfair in their judgement because they
could not move past their stereotypes, or those who
simply passed it by on their way to a Greek island.
All of these are perfectly understandable, but Athens
itself is a great narrative, a river of associations and a
personal island in the imagination of many. Beyond the
Acropolis, beyond Kerameikos and the ancient Agora,
Athens is the font of Greek urban civilization. It is a
city that praises the 20th century, with one foot in the
19th and the other in the 21st. It is difficult to feel the
polymorphic and exciting chapters of Athens as you
gaze out onto the endless sea of buildings from above.
But if one were to zoom into its urban fibre, one would
notice some of the most interesting buildings in the
Mediterranean – from the academic Neoclassicism of
the Greek “Victorian” age to the quaint houses of Plaka
around the Acropolis, or the more “experimental”
buildings of the 1920s and 1930s, when Athens became
a Bauhaus capital. Tel Aviv might be rightly known
as the White City of Modernism, but Athens has the
stylistic grace of a delightful, yet not widely-recognised,
architecture dating from the 1930s featuring grey-
coloured buildings designed mostly by Greek architects
who studied in France or Germany. Even during the
1950s and 1960s, Greek modernism gave birth to
buildings that could, if polished with a vintage lacquer,
touch people with their distinctive style.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 222
Growing
with the city
Nikos Vatopoulos αthens is my city. As a young I would see the old houses and the new
journalist who boy I heard family stories about apartment blocks, and before I knew it,
specializes in the Occupation in the capital. I started taking pictures of the city as it
cultural journalism, Η Αθήνα είναι η πόλη μου. Από changed. At the age of 15 with a camera
at the I Kathimerini μικρός άκουγα οικογενειακές in hand, which today would belong in
newspaper. διηγήσεις για τα χρόνια της a technology museum, I had already
δημοσιογράφος Κατοχής στην πρωτεύουσα. organised my first photographic archive, one that I
με εξειδίκευση would often revert to, not so much to compare it to
στο πολιτιστικό the Building of today as to understand the journey. Cities are very
ρεπορτάζ. εργάζεται National Bank of much like a coming-of-age story, a Bildungsroman. I
στην εφημερίδα Η Greece | το κτιριο τησ have reached an age of maturity, and Athens has also
Καθημερινή. εθνικησ τραπεζασ της changed, ten-fold. I often wonder what this city means
to me, a city that carries a DNA in its urban makeup
40 ελλαδοσ. that is not easily identifiable, and typically difficult to
comprehend. From a young age I was impassioned
by making people fall in love with Athens; those who
did not know the city, those who had experienced
it at the wrong time with the wrong people, those
who were unfair in their judgement because they
could not move past their stereotypes, or those who
simply passed it by on their way to a Greek island.
All of these are perfectly understandable, but Athens
itself is a great narrative, a river of associations and a
personal island in the imagination of many. Beyond the
Acropolis, beyond Kerameikos and the ancient Agora,
Athens is the font of Greek urban civilization. It is a
city that praises the 20th century, with one foot in the
19th and the other in the 21st. It is difficult to feel the
polymorphic and exciting chapters of Athens as you
gaze out onto the endless sea of buildings from above.
But if one were to zoom into its urban fibre, one would
notice some of the most interesting buildings in the
Mediterranean – from the academic Neoclassicism of
the Greek “Victorian” age to the quaint houses of Plaka
around the Acropolis, or the more “experimental”
buildings of the 1920s and 1930s, when Athens became
a Bauhaus capital. Tel Aviv might be rightly known
as the White City of Modernism, but Athens has the
stylistic grace of a delightful, yet not widely-recognised,
architecture dating from the 1930s featuring grey-
coloured buildings designed mostly by Greek architects
who studied in France or Germany. Even during the
1950s and 1960s, Greek modernism gave birth to
buildings that could, if polished with a vintage lacquer,
touch people with their distinctive style.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 222
