NIKOS KOUKIS EARTH MERGED WITH FIRE Atrion Gallery The photographer's most recent portfolio contains a collection of photographs taken on the charred spine of Seih-Sou, the forest bordering Thessaloniki. This series represents a pilgrimage through a forest destroyed by fire in the summer of 1997. The predominant tone here is black, for "black is like the silence of the body after death: it is the end of life". In the photographs displayed here, the burnt rocks intensify our sensation of catastrophe, since we all know that stone is the most fire-resistant material in any forest. The rocks occupy the foreground of these pictures, their texture conveyed as minutely as possible, with the contrast so amplified that we can comprehend the charring, the splitting, the despoliation of the moss. When even the rocks have been burned, we know what happened to everything else in the forest, animate and inanimate. Apostolos Maroulis (From his article Nikos Koukis, People and Places, "PARORON" magazine, vol. 9, December 2000). Born in Thessaloniki in 1956, Nikos Koukis studied the flute at the city's National Conservatory. He is a musician with the Thessaloniki State Orchestra and a teacher at the city's Modern Conservatory, and has been developing his interest in creative photography since 1978.