HECTOR DIMISSIANOS THE FRINGES OF THE CITY Co-Organized By The Municipal Cultural Services Ethnikis Amynis Art Gallery This is a strangely desolate and unfocused landscape: power pylons rising above olive trees, two and three-story buildings looming over humbler dwellings of breeze-block and plastic sheeting, and gaping ferroconcrete skeletons apparently foresaken by their owners. The ground is stony, with a thin covering of withered grass and thorns; further back, there are occasional glimpses of deeply eroded hills, limestone ribs dotted with a stubble of tough, leathery shrubs. A plowed field suddenly emerges from behind the mean houses, a row of newly-planted trees, an empty lot, and then perhaps a stretch of freshly-tarmaced road leading from nowhere to noplace. The inhabitants of this ephemeral landscape occupy it precariously, like tenants with shaky leases: children, mostly; some women; few men. The children flit lightly past, unconcerned; they play self-absorbed games with their grandfather's walking stick, outstare their elders and the camera, scamper up the memorial steps, play hide-and seek among the sheets of plastic, observe with dispassionate interest. Stunned with fatigue, the women look stony or distant; their smiles are all used up. The men turn away, not discourteously but with finality: what is there to say? Hector Dimissianos has turned his camera on this dusty no-man's-land, neither city nor country nor suburbia but a confusing, dystopic mixture of all three: the western fringes of the vast Athens-Piraeus conurbation, a chaotic region of mixed industrial and residential use, much of it unzoned. This is where the unwanted and marginalised end up: the poorest of the poor, those without contacts or influence to give them a hand up, the inevitable losers in the game of neo-liberal capitalism, but also political refugees new and old, economic refugees, and those perennial occupants of society's lowest niche in every Balkan and East European country, the gypsies. And yet - an important reservation, and one which Dimissianos's cool but not unengaged images successfully convey - this social landscape, while grim, is not entirely hopeless. These people have not given up; they make do, improvise, work hard. They cultivate what land they can, keep chickens, run tiny neighbourhood cafes, collect donations towards a new parish church. With luck, their squatted or illegally constructed dwellings will sooner or later be legalised in exchange for votes: a politically fruitful process, cheaper by far than a proper national housing policy. Social documentary, particularly that which proffers a critique of social deprivation, has never been a significant element of Greek photography; the lure of the picturesque usually proves too strong. Made with a strong instinct for the poetics of everyday life, Hector Dimissianos's photographs, which convey compassion without sentimentality or prurience, are a welcome and accomplished addition to this genre. John Stathatos Hector Dimissianos's monograph The Fringes of the City, with an introductory essay by John Stathatos, is published by University Studio Press, Thessaloniki.