Stylianou, Elena

This visual essay examines Sharqi, a collection of 27 polaroid photographs that are the result of Nicos Philippou’s decade-long photographic and theoretical investigation of Cypriot topography. The essay explores the ways in which Sharqi challenges existing photographic representations of Cyprus, produced mainly in the early-to-mid twentieth century by photographers, by travellers and by the state itself, while raising relevant questions about how: (a) Cypriot landscape photography often carries a romanticized and orientalizing gaze that attests as much to the island’s specific colonial past as to photography’s ties to imperialism, and (b) photography has often become a vehicle for perpetuating a Greek-Cypriot nationalism on the island. Finally, the essay addresses the documentary, autobiographical and self-referential nature of polaroid photography by discussing specific photographs from the Sharqi series. This article also looks at Sharqi in relation to relevant historic examples from the work of Ed Ruscha and Walker Evans.

This chapter begins by making reference to the image of Cypriot identity, constructed by colonial discourse and various travelers, photographers, geographers, and pseudo-anthropologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. While artistic practices from mid-twentieth century onwards were apparently in close dialogue with both local artists' studies in Europe and with the mainstream European avant-gardes, the earlier artistic practices on the island also tell of the beginnings of an alternative modernity in an area still defining its identity on the margins of Europe. The chapter identifies three main forces that have influenced the emergence of this contentious alternative modernity: British colonialism; Greek nationalism; and an organized Left and labor movement. Some references to vernacular photography and wider vernacular culture will also be made to further trace Cypriot modernity and its relation to the established orthodox narratives of European modernity.