Lia Nalbantidou Photography

  • About
  • Works
    • Urban Secret Garden (2010 - 2020)
    • The Secure, Private Domain of my Home (1996-2001) - Zero to Five
  • Contact
  • Exhibitions & Publications
    • Monographs
    • References

Statement

Once Upon A Time | 2001

Lia Nalbantidou

Once upon a time there was a family. Back then, the family had many children, maybe as many as the year’s months, the week’s days, or the right hand’s fingers. It also had aunts and uncles, and cousines and grandmothers and grandfathers. And not everybody liked the other, but they were living together, not always in harmony, but humans ought to live with one another, tolerating one the other΄s faults.

Living together is the way to learn how to love even when the relationships are not always convenient. Living within a family is about commitment to others outside ourselves.

But life has changed and the family now counts one child, or sometimes just one parent. As the Sunday paper informs me, in the United Kingdom of the year 2010 the single person households will be the rule rather than the exception. The family institution sits at the borderline of today΄s lifestyle. My generation, the «thirtysomething», aims to goals, pleasure, fame and power.

Our times allow for the disposal of a spouse and the search for another one. It is financially possible to remain single.Also,childless. Child rearing brings a lot of responsibilities. That is true. But the existence of children in the adult΄s life besides the constant renewal it provides, it makes him/her discover a magnificent other self, one hardly knew existed before. A child makes the willing adult to see life through another perspective fundamentally different from the one he or she has. A child broadens the horizon of the adult who has learned how to view him/herself as the only center of the world.

The Secure Private Domain of my Home (1996 – 2001) – Zero to Five, is a series of photographs exploring the emotional context of the family creation within the spacial framework of the house.It is perhaps my inheritance of forcefully displaced families (from both parents) that led me to attempt a redefinition and a recreation of an emotional photographic context, so that as to acquire a sense of belonging.

Family is a necessary condition. And like all things in life a family has limits. However, through the emotional development its members experience, they acquire a greater understanding for life. This is the ground where one learns to define and maintain their identity. Creating a family is the pivotal political act to defend and preserve our identity and culture.

Statement PDF

Information

The Secure, Private Domain of my Home (1996-2001) - Zero to Five

Το Ασφαλές, Ιδιωτικό πεδίο του Σπιτιού μου (1996-2001) - Μηδέν έως πέντε

The Secure, Private Domain of my Home (1996 – 2001) – Zero to Five is a series of 73 photographs identifying the emotional context created in the home of the young family, during the transitional period in which the 'chapter of girlishness and innocence closes to open up a new one of family, motherhood, home'.

Photographs from this series have been exhibited extensively in different cities & countries: New York City: Inside/Outside Robert Mann Gallery - Chelsea / Blind Spot Magazine #12 (1999) Toulouze, France: Territoires/Communautés, Galerie du Chateau d’Eau (2000) Turin, Italy: BIG Torino: Biennale Internationale Arte Giovane, Cavalerizza (2000) Athens: Art Athina – Contemporary Art Fair / Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center (2000) Skopelos Island: The Spirit of Family: Photographic Approaches, Photographic Centre of Skopelos (2002) Thessaloniki: Repositories of Time, Museum of Photography (2003) Athens: Acquisitions 2001 – 02, EMST National Museum of Contemporary Art (2003) Athens: Free Transit (?), the European Summit, Zappeion Megaron (2003) & Chalkidiki: Free Transit (?), the European Summit, Porto Carras Grand Resort Chalkidiki (2003) Berlin, Kiel, Halle and Stuttgart: Circum(de)scribed Worlds, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (2004) Circum(de)scribed Worlds, International Month of Photography (2005) & Photo-graphē, Ανάμεσα σε εικόνες και λέξεις, Benaki Museum (2018)

Photographs from »The Secure, Private Domain of my Home (1996 – 2001) – Zero to Five« project belong to private and Public Collections: EMST – State Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens (2001) & Photography Museum of Thessaloniki (2003)

»The Secure, Private Domain of my Home (1996 – 2001) – Zero to Five« photobook is represented in two int’l library collections: PhotoIreland Collection –The Library Project –Dublin, Ireland & Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library Yale University Indie Photobook Library/Larissa Leclair Collection, New Haven – US

Photobook info: »The Secure, Private Domain of my Home (1996 – 2001) – Zero to Five« Photographs Text by Lia Nalbantidou Editing and Design by Eleni Saroglou 220 x 170 mm colour / 64 pages / soft cover with dust jacket ISBN: 960-87354-1-6 (EN) / 500 copies (2002) – sold out ISBN: 960-87354-0-8 (GR) / 1000 copies (2002)

The artist’s essay »Die Sichere Privätsphare meines Heimes (1996 – 2001) – als Mutter, als Tochter: >Laufen< lernen und Aufbruch in die Kindheit«, was published in the collection of essays and articles entitled Body Project (Hg.) Korporealitäten. In(ter)ventionen zu einem omnipräsenten Thema (Königstein/Taunus: Ulrike Helmer Verlag, Berlin – Germany) (2002). The essay titled »The Secure Private Domain of my Home (1996 – 2001) as Mother, as Daughter: The toddler years and into childhood« was published in the collection Body Project (Eds.) Corporealities. In(ter)ventions in an Omnipresent Subject (Königstein/Taunus: Ulrike Helmer Verlag, Berlin – Germany) (2004).

Last update: November 15th, 2020

Information PDF

nalbantidou-spd-00 nalbantidou-spd-01 nalbantidou-spd-02 nalbantidou-spd-03 nalbantidou-spd-04 nalbantidou-spd-05 nalbantidou-spd-06 nalbantidou-spd-07 nalbantidou-spd-08 nalbantidou-spd-09 nalbantidou-spd-10 nalbantidou-spd-11 nalbantidou-spd-12 nalbantidou-spd-13 nalbantidou-spd-14 nalbantidou-spd-15 nalbantidou-spd-16 nalbantidou-spd-17 nalbantidou-spd-18 nalbantidou-spd-19 nalbantidou-spd-20 nalbantidou-spd-21 nalbantidou-spd-22 nalbantidou-spd-23 nalbantidou-spd-24 nalbantidou-spd-25 nalbantidou-spd-26 nalbantidou-spd-27 nalbantidou-spd-28 nalbantidou-spd-29 nalbantidou-spd-30

© 2014-2023 Lia Nalbantidou