Born in 1983, Vassilis lives and works as a corporate lawyer in Athens, Greece, while photography is an integral part of his daily life and a way to express himself outside the framework of his profession. He is drawn to mundane, everyday life scenes where the boundaries of what is real and what is not, start to blend, questioning the way that we perceive our day-to-day routines.
About The Voice of the Cicada – words by Vassilis Vasileiou:
I live in the southern suburbs of Athens, Greece. Inhabited continuously since ancient times, this is a place characterized by material abundance and a laid-back, luxurious lifestyle. At the same time, high fences, barbed wires, and surveillance cameras turn the houses into strongholds or border barricades and the streets into some kind of urban “no-man’s land”. This setting poses questions about the role of my domestic comfort zone and whether protection and restriction are the two sides of the same coin. By documenting the paradoxical elements that surround my everyday life, I try to make sense of myself and address my existential questions, however, it remains vague and unanswered to me whether the outside world is paradoxical or I am the paradox within it. Seen together, these elements form heterotopias that are extracted from their surroundings, offer a new viewpoint, and make a novel comment upon the existing references. Having the documentary genre as a starting point, the reality that I present is, therefore, a distilled one. The Voice of the Cicada is a visual testimony of my endeavor to interpret, transform and re-create the environment and the people that surround me, leading to an eventual understanding and definition of myself and my place in the world. My heroes, as alternate versions of myself, dwell in affluence, within their dazzling, colorful bubbles. Both watching and observing but also being watched, they look like fireflies in a sealed jar filled with sugar water.
