A statue, under construction, of Alexandros Panagoulis, a resistance fighter who opposed the fascist regime of the nineteen-sixties and seventies.
Mural, former Ministry of Employment building.
Cleaners’ locker room, national health clinic.
Hallway, shipping workers’ union.
Canteen, Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Office, Ministry of Development.
Fishbowl, fraud department, Greek national criminal-investigation unit.
Courtroom, central courthouse.
Stairwell, national Greek communications organization.
Poker table, coffeehouse.
Tax man’s shoes, central tax office.
Ceremony hall, Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences.
Meeting room, historic men’s club.
Office, funeral home.
Reception area at the headquarters of the K.K.E., the Greek Communist Party.
As the economic crisis roiled Greece, the photographer Eirini Vourloumis stepped away from the chaos and found quiet spaces in her home country to tell the story of disruption and decline. She had returned to Greece after eleven years abroad, and she saw it again with fresh eyes. “I wanted to move away from documenting riots and poverty and rediscover the stripped aesthetics of everyday Athens, my memory of which is very clear,” she told me. “This work is an examination of Athens and its role as a physical stage for the economic crisis.”
In this series, Vourloumis photographed interiors of government buildings, institutions, and schools to question how these spaces reflect modern Greek culture and character. “Spaces, which once seemed banal or unimportant, now reveal nuances of Greek reality and have social and political implications,” she said. “Like the Greek people, these places exist in anticipation of their future.”
Photographs by Eirini Vourloumis.
Greek Left Review 