honorable mention
Yiorgos Michael united states
Photo © Yiorgos Michael
title
burnt
His photographic practice combines portraiture, performance, and spatial symbolism, often staging quiet, psychologically resonant moments within transient or intimate environments. His visual language draws on the atmospheric subtlety of Pictorialism, the experimental abstraction of László Moholy-Nagy, and the introspective emotionality of Francesca Woodman and Duane Michals.
In parallel with his visual work, Yiorgos writes bilingual poetry in Greek and English, echoing the same emotional, philosophical, and spatial concerns found in his photographs. Across both mediums, he investigates the unseen: absence, fragmentation, ritual, and the quiet struggle between disappearance and visibility.
back to gallery
entry description
Wildfires have become the new reality we live in. In the Summer of 2021, wildfires in Cyprus destroyed ancestral land that my mother inherited from her parents. Her late parents planted many of the trees that were burned. These trees stood as the last living memories of them. And here is my mother lost in thought, grieving saliently, surrounded by loss, getting absorbed in the world she knew and now is gone.about the photographer
Yiorgos Michael is a self-taught visual artist and poet whose work explores themes of identity, aging, emotional constraint, and the fragile architecture of presence. Working at the intersection of post-documentary and conceptual photography, he constructs emotionally charged image sequences that blur the line between metaphor and memory.His photographic practice combines portraiture, performance, and spatial symbolism, often staging quiet, psychologically resonant moments within transient or intimate environments. His visual language draws on the atmospheric subtlety of Pictorialism, the experimental abstraction of László Moholy-Nagy, and the introspective emotionality of Francesca Woodman and Duane Michals.
In parallel with his visual work, Yiorgos writes bilingual poetry in Greek and English, echoing the same emotional, philosophical, and spatial concerns found in his photographs. Across both mediums, he investigates the unseen: absence, fragmentation, ritual, and the quiet struggle between disappearance and visibility.
back to gallery
