{"id":541844,"date":"2026-03-17T07:21:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T07:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/541844\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T07:21:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T07:21:08","slug":"arms-and-legs-are-very-expressive-especially-with-bruises-the-absurdist-photography-of-yorgos-lanthimos-photography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/541844\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Arms and legs are very expressive, especially with bruises\u2019: the absurdist photography of Yorgos Lanthimos | Photography"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the centre of Athens, a brand new temple has popped up. Walk around the tall white columns surrounding it and you\u2019ll eventually find the entrance to its inner sanctum. It might not be quite as old as the nearby Parthenon but it does hold a unique kind of treasure: the personal photographs of director Yorgos Lanthimos<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Taken over the last few years as he wandered his home country, they offer a glimpse of Greece through the auteur\u2019s absurdist eye. We see a coffin resting against a wall next to a mop, and a couple of horses with their heads chopped off by foregrounded trees. A roadside memorial is shown underneath a sign warning of danger ahead \u2013 the wiggly road symbol points directly upwards, as if suggesting the route to the next life for the poor victim. This last image is poignant, strange and funny, eliciting the same awkward clash of emotions you get from watching Lanthimos\u2019s films.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow you view it depends on your mood,\u201d agrees the director when we meet at the gallery of his Athens exhibition on its opening night. \u201cYou\u2019ll see it one day and laugh, then see it another day and be like, \u2018What happened here?\u2019 It\u2019s dark, it\u2019s nuanced, it\u2019s why I love that picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

double quotation markI\u2019m stepping back from cinema. I made three films back to back. I overdid it<\/p>\n

Lanthimos is no stranger to photography, but his previous images were connected \u2013 albeit loosely \u2013 to the films he made. These earlier works all feature in the new show, dotted around the outside of the makeshift temple. During Poor Things he produced lavish portraits of its stars \u2013 Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Jerrod Carmichael \u2013 while simultaneously exposing viewers to the lighting rigs, props and scaffolding that usually lurk just outside the movie camera\u2019s shot. For the follow-up, 2024\u2019s Kinds of Kindness<\/a>, Lanthimos created a body of work that had more in common aesthetically with American photographers \u2013 Lewis Baltz and Henry Wessel Jr say \u2013 than the film itself. One image features Willem Dafoe, but only the back of his head. Emma Stone appears, but it\u2019s her shadow.<\/p>\n

Some images, which appear in his new book Viscin, were taken while filming last year\u2019s Bugonia, although he says the book has \u201cvirtually nothing\u201d to do with the film: at the gallery entrance, Lanthimos has paired a photo of a dome-shaped building with one of Stone\u2019s equally dome-like head. Did nobody in the movie business take him aside and say: \u201cFor God\u2019s sake, Yorgos, this image of an A-lister\u2019s shin is all well and good, but can you please try pointing the camera at their face?\u201d He laughs: \u201cNo, thankfully we had a great on-set photographer to do the promotional side.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Developing photos calmed us\u2019 \u2026 Emma Stone on the set of Poor Things. Photograph: Courtesy Yorgos Lanthimos<\/p>\n

Lanthimos happily admits that he uses his camera not to extend his films\u2019 universes but to escape from their pressures. Stone, who has appeared in all of his movies since 2018\u2019s The Favourite, also caught the bug, joining Lanthimos each night after filming to help process that day\u2019s negatives in the makeshift darkroom in his hotel bathroom. \u201cAfter all this tension on set all day, it became this thing that calmed and focused us,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was meditative.\u201d<\/p>\n

I read somewhere that Stone felt guilty after ruining some of the photographs. \u201cShe was very sensitive about that,\u201d he smiles. \u201cShe said, \u2018This is someone else\u2019s picture. I don\u2019t want to ruin it!\u2019 But it was just a scratch. No big deal! She never botched the processing of a negative or anything. I think she was hanging a photo from a wire with a clip and it scratched the edges. I said, \u2018You won\u2019t even see it when it\u2019s cropped.\u2019 But she was really stressed about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The thing is, Lanthimos quite likes mistakes. In the show, a minimalist image of a sea and horizon sits with repetitive white marks slicing through the sky. \u201cShe didn\u2019t do that!\u201d he makes clear. \u201cI don\u2019t know how that happened. But we actually selected it because of the scratches. It is a really simple and minimal image, and the scratches gave it a sense of texture and tactility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lanthimos\u2019s love of the still image can be seen in a montage from Bugonia, which features all kinds of people \u2013 copulating lovers, mourners at gravestones \u2013 slumped and lifeless. The whole sequence seems like a homage to iconic images such as Mark Steinmetz\u2019s Carey in Full Sun or William Eggleston\u2019s photo of a zonked-out Marcia Hare, but Lanthimos says that was never intentional: \u201cOriginally the idea was to show people with their hearts exploding but I realised it would be a more powerful ending to have things still and silent. I think it just naturally became photographic.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a prolific period of moviemaking, Lanthimos is now stepping back from cinema. For how long, he doesn\u2019t know. \u201cI made three films back to back,\u201d he says. \u201cNo gap. I overdid it. So it might be a couple of weeks, it might be years. But I won\u2019t make another film until I get the urge again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spin city \u2026 a washing machine graveyard in Greece. Photograph: Courtesy Yorgos Lanthimos<\/p>\n

The truth is \u2013 perhaps weirdly for an acclaimed, Oscar-nominated director \u2013 Lanthimos doesn\u2019t enjoy much of the reality of making movies. The hordes of people on set, the constant decisions to be made, the press junkets, the awards frenzy. None of these suit his personality, which he repeatedly tells me is painfully shy in nature. Even a pursuit as solitary as photography can be made difficult by what he calls \u201cthe shyness issue\u201d \u2013 he finds himself unable to approach strangers and ask if he can photograph them. \u201cI\u2019m hoping I can do that in future, maybe with the help of other people,\u201d he says. There\u2019s something quite sweet about this fearless director \u2013 whose films tackle incest, self-mutilation and child sacrifice \u2013 finding it tough to go up to someone and say: \u201cMind if I take your picture?\u201d<\/p>\n

People don\u2019t feature too heavily in his series of Greece pictures, which he has called No Word for Blue. When they do, it\u2019s often from behind, or at a distance. Limbs with bodies out of shot are a speciality. A photograph of a woman\u2019s bruised leg appears, which feels in keeping with the way his films fetishise body parts \u2013 the rubbing, licking and kissing of them. What\u2019s his fascination?<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how to answer that,\u201d he smiles, before giving it a good go. \u201cI think parts of the body are very expressive, especially with bruises or birthmarks or acne or whatever. They can be expressive in a different way to a face. I guess it goes back to telling stories. If you only show a part of something and not the whole thing, it urges you to imagine the rest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Absurdist eye \u2026 Jesse Plemons on the set of Kinds of Kindness. Photograph: Courtesy Yorgos Lanthimos<\/p>\n

Igniting the viewer\u2019s imagination is key. I mention an image of a couple standing at the sea\u2019s edge, the male with his head bowed. I couldn\u2019t help project on to it a tale of grief, perhaps a pilgrimage to a site where someone close, perhaps even a child, had drowned at sea. Actually, says Lanthimos, it\u2019s simply a shot of his wife, the actor Ariane Labed, and a friend of theirs, preparing to dip their toes in the cold water. But he welcomes such interpretations. It\u2019s why he loves photography.<\/p>\n

I wonder if he has always had this strange, dark and funny way of viewing the world. After all, at one point he was primed for a career as a professional basketball player, following in the footsteps of his father, who played for Pagrati and the Greek national team. I try to imagine Lanthimos at 17, in the locker room with his teammates, his mind overflowing with the twisted and the taboo.<\/p>\n

Did he feel like an outsider? \u201cI guess that\u2019s why I quit basketball,\u201d he laughs. \u201cBut actually it\u2019s more that I\u2019m reserved and timid \u2013 in any situation. I wasn\u2019t doing sport and thinking, \u2018Actually, I\u2019m an artist.\u2019 I think I\u2019d feel the same way in any discipline.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018I looked at all the things in Greece I thought were ugly and horrible \u2013 and now saw them as unique\u2019 \u2026 an image from No Word for Blue. Photograph: Courtesy Yorgos Lanthimos<\/p>\n

At the age of 19, shortly after quitting the sport, Lanthimos picked up a camera \u2013 shooting his peers while at film school in Athens. These days he owns hundreds (film ones, that is \u2013 he has no time for digital). \u201cIt\u2019s an issue when I have to go somewhere,\u201d he says. \u201cI try to take no more than two at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lanthimos started out making adverts, before creating his own films in Greece such as the impeccably strange Dogtooth in 2009. They were celebrated as key parts of the country\u2019s \u201cweird wave\u201d (a term he dislikes). But after the financial crash caused funding to dry up, Lanthimos knew he would need to move away in order to continue making movies. His relocation to London clearly bore fruit, but also made him realise how much he missed his home country.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s dark, it\u2019s nuanced, I love it\u2019 \u2026 Lanthimos. Photograph: \u00a9Andreas Simopoulos for Onassis Stegi<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you grow up somewhere, you think you\u2019re in the worst place in the world and everywhere else is better,\u201d he says. \u201cBut with the distance, I started looking at all the things in Greece I thought were ugly and horrible \u2013 and now saw them as unique. I saw the contradictions in them and how that can be beautiful in a certain way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brexit, which made \u201ceverything more complicated for no reason at all\u201d, was the impetus for moving back. And so this is how Lanthimos plans to spend his life for the foreseeable, slowing the frantic pace, reacquainting himself with his homeland and making photographic works of an increasingly intimate and personal nature. Lanthimos might be struggling with the shyness issue, but the gates to his temple are open, and we\u2019re all invited to step inside.<\/p>\n

Yorgos Lanthimos: Photographs is at Onassis Stegi, Athens<\/a>, until 17 May. Viscin is on pre-order via Mack<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the centre of Athens, a brand new temple has popped up. Walk around the tall white columns…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":["post-541844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}