Long-term photographic work on Greek cultural identity
George Tatakis is a Greek photographer whose practice is built on sustained, research-driven photographic projects documenting tradition, ritual, and social memory across Greece.
For more than a decade, he has developed continuous bodies of work through repeated field engagement with local communities, producing photographic series that exist outside tourism imagery and short-term commissions. His work approaches photography as a long-term cultural practice rather than a sequence of isolated projects.
The resulting photographic works have been published internationally, realised through collaborations with cultural institutions and organisations, and preserved in museum archives and permanent collections. Read the whole story >
For commissioned cultural work, I follow a clearly defined artistic and ethical framework.
ABOUT THE WORK
George Tatakis produces and offers museum-quality black-and-white photography prints of Greece, available for purchase online and through selected exhibitions and partners. His work focuses on Greek landscapes, local traditions, and cultural identity, including the Caryatis and Ethos series.
All prints are produced to archival standards and shipped worldwide.
Greece
ATHENS. THE BENAKI MUSEUM. NOV6 2018 - JAN13 2019. ETHOS
France
CANNES. GRASSE. MUSEE FRAGONARD. MAY25 - SEP22, 2019. ETHOS
Greece
ATHENS. ATHENS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. JUL 2024 - JUL 2025. CARYATIS AETHER.
Greece
ATHENS. ATHENS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. JUL 2025 - DEC 2025. CARYATIS AETHER PART 2.
Greece
SOUFLI. SILK MUSEUM. JUL16 2025 - OCT10 2025. CARYATIS GAMMA - THRACE.
Ιταλία
TRIESTE, ITALY. PALAZZO GOPCEVICH. OCT 2025 - NOV 2025. CIVIC MUSEUMS AWARD.
Greece
KALAMATA. THE V. KARELIAS COLLECTION OF TRADITIONAL GREEK COSTUMES. AUG 2023. CARYATIS ALPHA.
Greece
SANTORINI ISLAND. SYMPOSION CULTURAL CENTER. SEP 2023. CARYATIS BETA.
United Kingdom
LONDON. KINGS CROSS. JUL - AUG 2018. ANOTHER EUROPE
Romania
BUCHAREST. APR 2019. ANOTHER EUROPE (ON TOUR)
Hungary
DEBRECEN. JUN 2021. ANOTHER EUROPE (ON TOUR)
United Kingdom
LONDON. SOMERSET HOUSE. APR 2022. SONY WORLD PHOTOGRAPHY AWARDS WINNERS' EXHIBITION.
South Korea
SEOUL. JUL - OCT 2022. DONGGANG INTERNATIONAL PHOTO FESTIVAL 2022.
Italy
MILAN. SEP - OCT 2022. FONDAZIONE STELLINE. SWPA TOUR.
Germany
BERLIN. OCT '22 - JAN '23. WILLY-BRANDT-HAUS. SWPA TOUR.
United States of America
SAN DIEGO. OCT '22 - MAR '23. MOPA. SWPA TOUR.
Turkey
ISTANBUL. SEP 2022. MIMAR SINAN FINE ARTS UNIVERSITY TOPHANE-I AMIRE CULTURE & ART CENTER SINGLE DOME HALL.
United Kingdom
LIVERPOOL. NOV - DEC '22. OPEN EYE GALLERY. SWPA TOUR.
Turkey
ANKARA. DEC 2022. CSO ADA ANKARA. ISTANBUL PHOTO AWARDS TOUR.
Spain
BARCELONA. VALID WORLD HALL GALLERY. MAR2 - 23 2023. LIFE-FRAMER ON TOUR
South Africa
JOHANNESBURG. FOTOZA GALLERY. MAY5 - 12 2023. LIFE-FRAMER ON TOUR
United States
BLOOMINGTON. FAR CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTS. NOV3 - 18 2023. LIFE-FRAMER ON TOUR
SWPA
London, UK
Sony World Photography Awards 2021. Winner, Portraits, 2nd place. Image selected as leading visual.
VIEPA
Vienna, Austria
Vienna International Photo Festival. Overall trophy winner.
LICC
London, UK
London International Creative Competition 2021. Winner in Shoot (Photo/Video)
URBAN AWARDS
Τεργέστη, Ιταλία
Trieste Photo Days 2025. Civic Museums Award.
IPA
New York, NY, USA
International Photography Awards 2021. Winner, 2nd place
MonoVisions
International
MonoVisions Photography Awards 2022. Black & White Series of the Year
Life Framer
International
Life Framer, Home Sweet Home 2022. Winner, 2nd place
Istanbul Photo Awards
İstanbul, Turkey
Istanbul Photo Awards 2022. Winner, 2nd place, Story portrait
Px3
Paris, France
Prix de la Photographie 2021. Winner, 3rd place
VIEPA
Seoul, South Korea
Vienna International Photo Festival. Bronze Medal - Free Subject. Plus 5x Honorable mentions.
MUSE
New York, NY, USA
MUSE Photography Awards 2022. Platinum Winner.
IPA
New York, NY, USA
International Photography Awards 2021. Jury Top 5
TIFA
Tokyo, Japan
Tokyo International Foto Awards 2021. Official Selection
TIFA
Tokyo, Japan
Tokyo International Foto Awards 2021. Honorable Mention
All About Photo
International
All About Photo Awards 2022. Merit Award
DIPF
Seoul, South Korea
DongGang International Photo Festival. Open call selected artist exhibition.
reFocus
United States of America
reFocus Awards. Honorable Mention.
ND Awards
International
ND Awards. Honorable mention - People - Travel/Culture
Images are published internationally, including the New York Times, National Geographic, Leica LFI/M and more
Published
Partnered with National Geographic, TUI, Canon, Huawei, Leica, Blue Star Ferries, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, UNESCO, Open Farm
Partnered
Digital archive is held and safeguarded by the Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece. Benaki, Fragonard (Cannes) and Avant-garde (Lugano) Museums keep works in their permanent collections.
Archive
Ryan Libre was hypnotized by this series. Was in a spell that lasted quite a while. Totally unforgettable.
International Photography Awards Jury
The people in your images fit into the beautiful scenarios perfectly
Leica camera editorial team
Thank you for the great photos
Antoine d' Agata, Photographer, Magnum Photos
While he might have been a mark for a flour bomb, the shots taken were well worth it.
Jennifer Tallerico, Editor, fstoppers.com
We love your photography.
Carla Erdmann, Editor LFI
Each person here has a story to tell to it feels like they are all unfolding in front of you.
Matt Adams, Editor National Geographic
Your pictures are AMAZIIIIIIIING!
Fragonard Museum team
The images plunge me back into Greece of my ancestors.
Nikos Aliagas
The images we have seen are absolutely brilliant.
the Benaki Museum
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Early Exposure and First Encounters with Photography
My relationship with photography began long before it became a profession. Growing up in Athens, I was surrounded by images almost unconsciously. My mother carried a camera with her at all times—an unusual habit in the 1980s. At the same time, a neighbour in my grandfather’s bicycle shop (Tsiliggiris) in Kallithea ran a small photo lab, where film was developed, and videotapes were rented. The mechanics of photography and the anticipation of seeing an image emerge made a lasting impression.
From an early age, I was drawn to artistic expression. I studied piano, drew and painted, and later explored other creative fields. At sixteen, I bought my first camera with my own savings. Photography entered my life not as a decision, but as a gradual accumulation of curiosity.
Engineering, Travel, and the Delayed Turn Toward Art
Believing that art alone was not a viable professional path, I studied Electrical Engineering in Edinburgh, completing both my undergraduate degree and a postgraduate degree. I later began doctoral research in Greece, which I eventually left in order to enter the job market.
For nearly a decade, I worked as an engineer, including a senior business development role in an international technology company specializing in managing large-scale solar energy systems. Extensive travel during this period intensified my engagement with photography. Each trip reinforced the idea that photography was not simply documentation, but a way of thinking.
The decisive moment came when I left engineering entirely. Photography ceased to be parallel to my life and became its central axis.
First Exhibition and the Missolonghi Turning Point (2015)
My first solo exhibition, INDIA, took place in Missolonghi in 2015 during a local photography festival. While there, I encountered the Ai Simios (St Simeon) festival—a ritual deeply embedded in local history, community, and collective memory.
Photographing this event marked a turning point. For the first time, I realized that Greek rituals and customs were not simply visual subjects. They were living systems, requiring time, repetition, and sustained presence. This realization laid the conceptual foundation for what would later become Ethos.
The Birth of Ethos: Customs, Character, and Identity
Ethos began as a long-term photographic exploration of traditional events, rituals, and communal expressions across Greece. The name Ethos emerged later, during the curatorial process of the first major exhibition. It reflected both the ethical character of the work and its subject matter—ήθη και έθιμα, the customs that shape collective identity.
The early years of Ethos were marked by significant practical difficulties. Having left my engineering career, financial resources were limited. Travel was done primarily by car, often avoiding toll roads. I frequently slept in the car, outdoors on beaches, or in the homes of local people who offered hospitality. These constraints were not aesthetic choices but practical realities.
Paradoxically, these conditions enabled deeper access. Remaining longer in each place, returning repeatedly, and participating in everyday life fostered trust. Many images from Ethos exist precisely because the photographer was no longer perceived as an outsider.
Publications, International Recognition, and Leica
As Ethos developed, the work began to circulate internationally. It was published in major outlets including National Geographic, LFI (Leica Fotografie International), and other international and Greek publications. Several images were featured by Leica in their Master Shots and Photo of the Week selections.
These publications did not alter the direction of the work but confirmed its relevance within a broader photographic and cultural context.
Reflex Photographers and Cultural Platforms
During this period, I co-founded the cooperative Reflex Photographers. My primary role within the collective was business development and strategic partnerships. I was responsible for initiating collaborations, managing institutional relationships, and shaping the outward-facing strategy of the group.
One of the major initiatives of this period was pculiar.com, a cultural platform documenting customs and traditions in Greece and beyond. While the platform itself was technically developed by Antonis Chrysakis, I was involved in its strategic direction, partnerships, and content development.
Through Reflex and pculiar, collaborations were established with organizations such as Canon, Leica Fotografie International, Huawei, and Blue Star Ferries. The collaboration between pculiar and Blue Star Ferries later received a Silver Award at the Greek Tourism Awards.
Ethos at the Benaki Museum and International Exhibitions
In 2018, Ethos – Another Side of Greece was presented at the Benaki Museum of Greek Culture in Athens, under the auspices of the Greek Ministries of Culture and Tourism. The exhibition was the result of sustained curatorial effort, extensive follow-ups, and long-term strategic work.
Following Athens, Ethos traveled internationally. In 2019, it was presented at the Fragonard Museum in Grasse, France. During discussions with the museum, curatorial interest shifted toward women’s traditional dress—an interaction that directly influenced the direction of my next project.
From Ethos to Caryatis: Two Catalysts, One Shift
Caryatis did not emerge abruptly, nor was it a stylistic experiment. It was the result of two distinct but converging experiences that fundamentally altered my relationship with photographic method.
The first catalyst was institutional.
When Ethos was invited to be presented at the Fragonard Museum in Grasse, France, curatorial discussions naturally shifted toward the role of women within traditional culture. Grasse—historically associated with perfume, femininity, and crafted identity—prompted a focus on women’s traditional dress as carriers of collective memory. This curatorial dialogue planted the first concrete seed for a new body of work.
The second catalyst was conceptual—and more disruptive.
In the same period, one of my photographs was selected to represent Greece at the exhibition “Another Europe”, held at King’s Cross in London. The exhibition was organised by the Austrian Cultural Forum in London in collaboration with the European Commission and featured one photograph per EU member state. Greece was represented by my work.
During my stay in London for the exhibition, hosted in part through the Austrian Embassy, I visited The Photographers’ Gallery in Soho. There, I encountered an exhibition by Alex Prager.
At that point in my career, I had largely demonised staged photography. My work was rooted in lived experience, repetition, and unmanipulated situations. Walking through Prager’s exhibition, I initially assumed the images were extraordinary snapshots—complex scenes captured through impeccable timing. I was deeply impressed by their visual density and narrative ambiguity.
At the end of the exhibition, a behind-the-scenes video was projected. It revealed that the images were fully staged, constructed through elaborate sets, actors, and cinematic direction.
That moment was decisive.
It forced a reassessment of a belief I had held almost dogmatically: that authenticity in photography was inseparable from spontaneity. Watching the making of those images, I realised that what ultimately matters is not how an image is produced, but what it communicates—and whether it holds visual, emotional, and conceptual truth.
The Fragonard curatorial direction and the Alex Prager exhibition functioned together as the two necessary conditions for Caryatis. One provided the subject. The other dissolved a methodological prohibition I had imposed on myself.
Caryatis was born at that intersection:
a project that maintained ethnographic responsibility and cultural fidelity, while allowing for fully staged, directed photographic construction—always in service of meaning, never spectacle.
Awards, Exhibitions, and How Caryatis Was Rolled Out Publicly
Between 2021 and 2025, Caryatis received 24 international photographic awards. The project, however, was never designed as a “small set” of images. Its full form is a 200+ work exhibition, and that reality created a practical problem from the start: printing and framing the complete body of work at once would be prohibitively expensive.
To solve this, I designed a phased public rollout: a sequence of smaller exhibitions that would introduce Caryatis across Greece while gradually building toward the final unified presentation in Athens. This is why the exhibitions were named as chapters—Caryatis Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and so on. Each chapter functions as a public “entry point” into the larger work, while also making the production financially and logistically sustainable.
THE GREEK CHAPTER EXHIBITIONS
Caryatis Alpha — Kalamata (Aug 2023)
The first introduction of Caryatis to the Greek public took place in Kalamata, hosted at the “V. Karelias Collection of Traditional Greek Costumes”, in collaboration with the Lyceum Club of Greek Women Kalamata. This exhibition established the model: Caryatis presented in focused chapters, inside institutions directly connected to the cultural and historical reality of Greek dress.
Caryatis Beta — Santorini (Sep 2023)
The second chapter followed at Symposion Cultural Center, Santorini, expanding the project’s public presence beyond the mainland and confirming that the chapter format could travel effectively within Greece.
Strategic partnership with Piraeus Bank Group Cultural Foundation (PIOP)
After Alpha and Beta, a strategic partnership was initiated with PIOP to support the continuation of the chapter exhibitions and to build a clear institutional road toward the major concluding exhibition in Athens once the overall body of work is complete.
Caryatis Gamma — Soufli Silk Museum (Jul 2025 - Feb 2026)
The first chapter developed under the broader continuation plan was Caryatis Gamma – Thrace, presented at the Silk Museum in Soufli. This marked a shift from isolated exhibitions to a structured institutional trajectory.
Athens International Airport: Caryatis Aether (and why it mattered)
In parallel, Caryatis entered a uniquely public arena through Athens International Airport, where exhibitions cannot be hosted by private artists directly. For this reason, both airport exhibitions were presented by the Lyceum Club of Greek Women Kalamata and held under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture.
Caryatis Aether — Athens International Airport (Jul 2024 – Jul 2025)
This was the project’s most continuously visible presentation to date, bringing Caryatis into daily contact with an international audience.
Caryatis Aether Part 2 — Athens International Airport (Jul 2025 – Dec 2025)
Because of the reception of the first exhibition, the airport presented a second exhibition by the same artist—a first in the airport’s exhibition program. Both exhibitions were also extended significantly beyond their originally agreed dates, reflecting the institutional and public response.
International Touring Through Awards (SWPA and beyond)
Alongside the Greek exhibition chapters, Caryatis also circulated internationally through award-driven touring exhibitions. A major milestone in this trajectory came through the Sony World Photography Awards: an image from Caryatis photographed in Spetses was selected as the main visual for the SWPA Winners’ Exhibition, which launched at Somerset House, London (Apr 2022), and then travelled internationally as part of the tour.
UNESCO and Cultural Preservation
In 2019, selected photographic and ethnographic material from my archive was included in the official dossier for Karpathiko Glendi. The material contributed to its inscription in Greece’s National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage under the Ministry of Culture and Sports, within the framework of UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
This marked a shift from documentation toward cultural preservation.
Independence and Continuity After Reflex
Following the conclusion of Reflex Photographers, all institutional collaborations, academic relationships, and partnerships remained with me personally. The work continued independently, maintaining its research-driven and institutional orientation.
Fonissa: When Photography Entered the Film Itself
My first meaningful contact with cinema did not come through directing, nor through conventional behind-the-scenes work. It came through photography—embedded inside a film as part of its narrative structure.
During the production of Fonissa, I was invited to collaborate as a Conceptual Photography Consultant. My role was not to document the film set, but to create photographic images that would exist within the film itself. These photographs functioned as narrative objects: props that carried psychological and symbolic weight, influencing the flow and atmosphere of the story.
Alongside these in-film photographs, I developed a parallel photographic narration—a sequence of images constructed in my own visual language, responding to the film’s themes rather than illustrating its scenes. This required a shift in thinking: from the autonomy of the single image to the responsibility of images operating in sequence, rhythm, and emotional continuity.
For the first time, I was directly exposed to the internal mechanics of film production:
how visual intention is negotiated, how atmosphere is built collaboratively, and how meaning emerges from the interaction of image, sound, time, and performance.
What mattered to me was not the novelty of participating in a film, but the realisation that many of the questions I had been exploring through photography—staging, authorship, narrative tension, and time—were already cinematic in nature.
Fonissa did not pull me away from photography.
It revealed that photography could operate inside cinema without losing its autonomy.
Extending the Frame: From Still Images to Time
Following Fonissa, it became clear that if I wanted to explore these questions further, I needed a space that allowed for sustained experimentation—outside institutional constraints, commissions, or predefined formats.
This is how my YouTube channel emerged.
Not as a content platform, and not as a departure from photography, but as a controlled environment: a place to test how a photographic way of seeing behaves when extended across time. The channel functions as a laboratory where I can explore cinematography, narrative structure, rhythm, and editing—using real projects rather than abstractions.
Photography remains the foundation.
Composition, geometry, restraint, and intention still govern the work. The difference is duration. Instead of a single decisive moment, the image is now allowed to unfold, to breathe, to accumulate meaning.
The channel also reflects a broader shift in authorship. Rather than waiting for permission, commissions, or institutional frameworks, it allows me to develop ideas independently, refine a cinematic language, and engage directly with an audience that values process as much as result.
This is not a reinvention.
It is a continuation.
My work remains rooted in Greek culture, identity, and tradition—not as nostalgia, but as living material. Whether through still images or moving ones, the objective remains the same: to create work that resists imitation, rewards slow viewing, and carries a clear authorial voice.
Photography taught me how to see.
Cinema is teaching me how to let that vision unfold in time.