W1D CYNTHIA TZITZIS

About

With this exhibition, Cynthia tells a story of 29 Greek professionals, who left their mother country pursuing a better future.

W1D, Cynthia says: is the postcode of Greek Street in London. It took the name after a Greek church that was built in 1677. This photography exhibition tells the story of 20 Greek professionals who live and work in London. Mainly young people who came to the UK the last few years in search of a better future. While pursuing success and happiness, these young people keep carrying Greece’s debris with them, by creating easy to carry memory tool cases, by making associations not so obvious to the bare eye, by making new friends who could have been part of the childhood they left behind, by inventing places in between, by simulating and comparing flavors and scents, habits and experiences.

The 30 acquaintances and friends of the photographer, who were chosen by her for different important reasons, compose this chapter and set a pause to it. They generously offer to the Cynthia’s lens the small fertile gardens of ‘now’ that they had to create and inhabit while at the same time, they were leaving ‘there’ behind. And they allowed the photographer’s penetrative glance to focus and capture all those elements that they love and all those that they are in an eloquent, unadorned and articulate manner.

By choosing the space and setting the angle of the shot, Cynthia Tzitzis brings the ‘faces’ on her lens –literally and metaphorically- in a direct confrontation with the viewer who is allowed a temporary intrusion into their lives.

By composing the Materia prima of the image, framing this image with surgical precision and clarity, translucently inserting the subjects and objects that it is consisted of, determining either the ‘together’ or the ‘solitary’ of the protagonists, organising the microcosm of her models with absolute limpidity and image-making dexterity, Cynthia Tzitzis creates a bespoke and exceptionally eloquent register of people, who act consciously while feeling nostalgic, but mainly while knowing and interpreting the past, seizing the present and anticipating the future with an optimistic self-awareness. She implies their personal and professional identity, deconstructing and reconstructing all the stories that they left behind them and by outlining the coordinates, which set the current time of their expeditious British biorhythm.

Cynthia Tzitzis was born in 1978 in Athens. Growing up with a camera in her hands, spending her childhood shooting constantly whatever caught her attention, she ended perfecting her skills studying next to great professors such as Alkis Xanthakis,Yiannis Yiannakopoulos and Antonis Atmatzides. In 1999, Cynthia started working alongside Dinos Diamantopoulos until 2008. After 16 years as an established photographer, Cunthia’s portfolio includes clients such as Sony Records, EMI Records, IMAKO publications, ANT1 Channel and Mega Channel. In 2008, she was commisioned by Vodafone to cover the S.O.S Children's Villages charity work.

In 2012, Cynthia moved to London where she quickly established her work as a freelance photographer was commissioned to offer her services to Life Action Trust and to London Film School.

Iris Kritikou, art critic, writes: “While pursuing success and happiness, these young people keep carrying Greece’s debris with them, by creating easy to carry memory tool cases, by making associations not so obvious to the bare eye, by making new friends who could have been part of the childhood they left behind, by inventing places in between, by simulating and comparing flavors and scents, habits and experiences.