Kostas Kapsianis, born in 1963, is a Greek photographer raised and based in Athens. Besides photography, he also works in his family business selling packaging goods. Shot with a Mamiya medium format camera, his series A Common Story deals with the Greek countryside of nowadays.
Fond of images since an early age, he used to collect photo magazines and to observe scenes from his daily life. Even at today, he still finds himself looking at the world in that same way. Kostas bought his first camera at sixteen, but quickly gave up until twenty years later when on a trip to Latin America, his travel partner offered him a camera with 10 rolls and that was it, he fell in love again.
Working with analog because of its plastic qualities and performance, Kostas appreciates particularly the relationship with time that this medium imposes. The fact that one can’t have direct result of a shot, pushes you to take time previously to think about the result you’re looking for and most importantly, you can experience your own mistakes.
Initiated in 2013, the series A Common Story allowed Kostas to travel and discover the Greek countryside through the lens of his camera. He quickly realized that this project was directly linked to the tales and memories of his father, who was a financial migrant after the Greek Civil War and often spoke with nostalgia about his place of origin. Thanks to his father’s stories, he got an idea about the countryside’s daily life, and it felt very familiar to him even if it wasn’t his. Believing nothing is accidental, Kostas evokes the heritage with the Greek current situation: “… working on this ongoing project today, is maybe directly related to what is happening in Greece. There are alternative ways for current events worrying people nowadays, to be expressed”.
See the full series on his website.
