I love listening. It is one of the only spaces where you can be still and moved at the same time. — Nayyirah Waheed — Wednesday February 10th — —

The idea is to die young as late as possible. — Ashley Montagu — Wednesday February 10th — —

“What art does — maybe what it does most completely — is tell us, make us feel that what we think we know, we don’t. There are whole worlds around us that we’ve never glimpsed.” Greil Marcus — Wednesday February 10th — —

Paradise Inn

Always looking for photography with the quality of a verb rather than a noun (in the inspirational words of Gus Powell), we recently encountered another great series of work. Greek photographer Marinos Tsagkarakis started his series ‘Paradise Inn’ in 2012, aiming to portray the (horrible) consequences of the massive and uncontrolled tourist development which has taken place in the last few decades throughout the Mediterranean, including his home Greece. The ruthless industry drastically intrudes the land, transforming whole coastal areas into generic paradises, designed to recreate the average man on holiday. Literarily just during that period of time, as the rest of the year these areas stay abandoned, losing its thin layer of camouflage in the form of happy holidayers and showing its true colors of intense ugliness. The images of Tsagkarakis show the cheap fundament on which the tourist industry is built, forming a sad but beautiful testament of how some people have lost the true meaning of the word ‘paradise’.

As Μarcel Proust said, the only true paradise is the paradise we have lost.’Paradise Inn’ is a tribute to all the lost paradises, in which millions of ordinary people manage to impose their own selves, the desperate experience that anyone could eventually face: the impairment of our quality of life and aesthetics and the loss of use of the natural space.

Marinos Tsagkarakis was born and raised in the island of Crete, in Southern Greece. He studied contemporary photography at STEREOSIS Photography School, in Thessaloniki, Greece. After his studies the photographer became a member Depression Era collective that inhabits the urban and social landscapes of the economic crisis in his home country.

His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions and international festivals, including Mois De La Photo in Paris, European Month of Photography in Budapest, Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, Athens Biennale, FOCUS Photography Festival in Mumbai and Fotoistanbul. Moreover, he has exhibited his photographs in important art spaces such as Benaki Museum in Athens, Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, Museo de Bogotá and several galleries in Canada, USA and Europe.

For more information and work by Marinos see here