Niko J Kallianiotis captures Athens’ multitudes
The photographer’s second book portrays the streets and suburbs of the Greek capital that he once called home
With his latest photo book Athênai: In Search of Home, Niko J Kallianiotis portrays Athens through fresh eyes. The photographer grew up in the Greek capital but moved to the US when he was young – his first photo book, America in a Trance, was based in his adopted home of Pennsylvania.
Athênai conveys the city’s multiculturalism, the persistent contrast between history and the modern day, and a series of multitudes which, as curator Hercules Papaioannou writes in the introduction, illustrate “every success and failure of modern Greek society”.
![Image by Niko J. Kallianiotis showing rows of sofas and TVs arranged inside a large hall](https://creativereview.imgix.net/content/uploads/2023/01/niko-j-kallianiotis-3.jpg?auto=compress,format&q=60&w=1920&h=1281)
![Image by Niko J. Kallianiotis shows a person looking out through the window of a parking garage](https://creativereview.imgix.net/content/uploads/2023/01/niko-j-kallianiotis-8.jpg?auto=compress,format&q=60&w=1200&h=800)
![Image by Niko J. Kallianiotis shows a grassy sports field overlooking the coastline of Athens](https://creativereview.imgix.net/content/uploads/2023/01/niko-j-kallianiotis-9.jpg?auto=compress,format&q=60&w=1920&h=1280)
Plenty of people looking in from the outside would reduce that success-failure binary to Greece’s enduring influence on culture and society, and the more recent economic crisis felt throughout the country.
Athênai touches on these chapters in its history but offers a more holistic portrait, as Kallianiotis takes photographs with no agenda other than to reacquaint himself with the place he once called home.
![Image by Niko J. Kallianiotis shows a gathering of people flying kites in a park area](https://creativereview.imgix.net/content/uploads/2023/01/niko-j-kallianiotis-13.jpg?auto=compress,format&q=60&w=1920&h=1281)
![Image by Niko J. Kallianiotis shows a person inside a small white building framed by the window](https://creativereview.imgix.net/content/uploads/2023/01/niko-j-kallianiotis-6.jpg?auto=compress,format&q=60&w=1920&h=1281)
Architecture and monuments feature prominently, but so too do less widely seen pockets of the city and its surroundings, from industrial quarters to a rain-sodden coast to districts that are home to refugee communities.
Papaioannou says that Kallianiotis shows how Athens has eroded “boundaries geographical and cultural, economical and social, belonging normatively to the western context while deftly evading its rigid austerity, maintaining its ancient definition as a city-state, in both historical and contemporary terms. In this sense, Athens eludes any definite description.”
![Image by Niko J. Kallianiotis shows a running track overlooked by the Acropolis in Athens](https://creativereview.imgix.net/content/uploads/2023/01/niko-j-kallianiotis-11.jpg?auto=compress,format&q=60&w=1920&h=1281)
![Image by Niko J. Kallianiotis shows a street in Athens covered in shadows except one strip of light](https://creativereview.imgix.net/content/uploads/2023/01/niko-j-kallianiotis-1.jpg?auto=compress,format&q=60&w=1920&h=1280)
![Image by Niko J. Kallianiotis shows a sloping street with a door next to a large window, which shows an object draped in the Greek and Ukrainian flags](https://creativereview.imgix.net/content/uploads/2023/01/niko-j-kallianiotis-12.jpg?auto=compress,format&q=60&w=1200&h=800)
![Image by Niko J. Kallianiotis shows a person wearing a red and white football kit holding a football under one arm, stood within an enclosed outdoor space with red walls](https://creativereview.imgix.net/content/uploads/2023/01/niko-j-kallianiotis-10.jpg?auto=compress,format&q=60&w=1200&h=800)
![Image by Niko J. Kallianiotis showing the inside of an empty shopping mall and a glimpse of the underground seated space beneath it](https://creativereview.imgix.net/content/uploads/2023/01/niko-j-kallianiotis-2.jpg?auto=compress,format&q=60&w=1200&h=800)
Athênai: In Search of Home by Niko J Kallianiotis is published by Damiani Editore; damianieditore.com