After an Economic Crisis, Modern-Day Greek Ruins
By Lauren Frohne
This video is part of a series of interviews with photographers featured in Moving Walls 21. Moving Walls is an annual exhibit produced by the Open Society Documentary Photography Project exploring a variety of social justice and human rights issues.
It was the heart of Greece’s industrial economy. And it was destroyed virtually overnight.
Four-hundred factories once operated in the region of Thrace. In the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2009, only 10 still function. Almost 30 percent of Greece is now unemployed.
Photographer Nikos Pilos documents the wreckage: skeletons of abandoned buildings; looted offices; a lone, tattered desk chair. The losses that these images quietly evoke run deep.
This is what economic crisis looks like, and Nikos Pilos refuses to look away. He asks that we do the same. The future of Greece—and of all Europe—may depend on it.
It is images like these that will loom in the minds of many European Union citizens as they go to the polls later this month to elect the European Parliament. The results will shape the European economy for years to come.
What do these images evoke for you? Share your thoughts below.
Until September 2014, Lauren Frohne was a multimedia producer for the Open Society Foundations.
