Athens – L’Aquila. A discussion about the experience of two cities, through the walking experience, looking at the feeling of intimacy and renegotiating with the traces of our childhood memory.

What is it like to leave a city devastated by a civil war and find yourself in a familiar city?

What is it like to return years later, to a familiar city intact in your memory, destroyed by an earthquake?

In a discussion on Wednesday 22 May 2024, at 19:30 at the premises of the Architects’ Association in Plaka, 15 Vrysakiou Street, with Eugenia Mylonaki and Alexandros Mistriotis, the photographic books PENDULUM and HEAR YOU ATHENS will be presented, and there will be a discussion around the thoughts and confessions of the authors about their experiences in two disparate cities that hosted and shaped them.

HEAR YOU ATHENS

Athens, the third room of my apartment 

HEAR YOU ATHENS* is a series of 50 photographs and two letters, a correspondence between two  friends, Georges Salameh and Alexandros Mistriotis. Their conversation, over the years, is summarized  in this book.

*The body of work HEAR YOU ATHENS was produced over an eight year period, from 1998 to 2006. 

Athens, May 2021 

MeMSéA / Edition of 500 

Texts: Georges Salameh & Alexandros Mistrotis 

Language: Greek, English 

Graphic design: Chora Atelier 

PENDULUM 

Pendulum book is a visual approach of a return journey to the city of L’Aquila in central Italy. In 2009 a  strong earthquake destroyed the city and caused an open wound on its body. I moved there only a few  years after the disaster, in order to work as an architect in the reconstruction of the city, but in reality  it was a return to my fictitious roots. 

Athens, February 2019 

Self-Published / Edition of 200 

Texts: Stefania Orfanidou, Panos Bourlessas 

Language: English, Italian 

Graphic design: Charis Karantzas, Stefania Orfanidou