PANAYOTIS PAPADIMITROPOULOS LIKE A PHOTOMONTAGE Ianos Bookstore Gallery This series of photographs by Panayotis Papadimitropoulos falls within the framework of traditional urban landscape photography, as it has developed from W. Evans to the present. Like a research scientist, Papadimitropoulos delves ever deeper into the formalistic discoveries of previous generations, his chosen subject being the visual hyper-information offered by the cities he lives in: Thessaloniki, Athens, Paris. Just as Cartier-Bresson sought the "instant decisif", so Papadimitropoulos emphasises what he calls the "decisive space". What stands out, in other words, is less the choice of the most expressive moment in a film sequence than the quality of the elements and the way in which these are inscribed within the photographic frame. The photographer consciously chooses to depict the city in a specific way, which he calls "quasi photomontage". The photomontages he produces, of course, are nothing like those of the dadaists, because they contain nothing extraneous to photography. The image remains untouched, as recorded by the lens. Buses, bus stops, passers-by, newsstands, shop windows, reflections in the mirrors of shop fronts, newspapers, advertisement boards, construction machinery, architectural decors, all constitute a pliable material that is imprinted on the two-dimensional surface of the film, offering in each instance a new version of what the photographer calls "quasi photomontage". Above all, these are abstract forms, graphic shapes that work in parity within the frame, like the gears of an engine. Complexity of composition, disorder, multiplicity of meaning, fragmentation, combinations of disparate elements: these are what the eye of the photographer sees. "What I want", as he says himself, "is for my photographs to resemble the scribbled productions of a child who has just begun to draw". Panayiotis Papadimitropoulos was born in 1957. He lives and works in Paris, where he studied photography (Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs and Paris VIII). His work has appeared in various group and individual exhibitions in Greece and abroad.