Thinking in Photographs with Michael Mersinis

Publication of Works as part of the 'Broken Windows Project'
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\nSocial scientists Wilson and Kelling introduced the ‘Broken Windows Theory’, where visible signs of disorder create an urban environment that encourages further disorder. There is an implication that the urban landscape allows a communication of lack of authority and this, in turn, proliferates a disregard for social norms and law. A new social geography emerges leading to a continuous deterioration of culture and community, as disorder becomes more common. The works scrutinize the nuanced relationship between causality and correlation and advocate a complex response to how the urban landscape ultimately can become a site of resistance of marginalised communities and how disorder reflects the complexities of class dynamics. Disorder is reframed as a complex phenomenon, imbued with transformative potential and latent opportunities for societal renewal and magical opportunities. The images in the series speak of a set of conditions that exist now in what was a failed gentrified portion of the city of Athens, Greece. They weave interpersonal narratives and hint at biographies and conditions that are at once difficult and wonderful. An inherit aesthetisation of the photograph (is not every photograph a tableau of some sort?) confronts a reality that has a hard edge. The narratives that spring from the images are suggestive and attempt to speak towards a biography of self, and the site they are made as well as chronicle life’s of people that occupy it.