Transit in Columbia Athens

• Photographer
  Dionysis Kouris, Greece
• Website
  http://www.dionysiskouris.com

My story depicts North African immigrants living in the once
preeminent, now abandoned Columbia Records building in
Greece. After spending some time there, they try their luck at
the port of Patras, in hopes of getting on board a ship to Italy.
Very few of them are able to make it.
Although there are no frontiers to music in this abandoned
music factory we see undocumented migrants, stuck in a
building, stuck in a country with unclear laws and policies on
immigration; and in the piles of archives and rubbish of a record
company some people are trying to build a new life.

I am trying to approach the huge and very complicated problem
of immigration through the three elements that form my photo
essay: music, immigration and cultural background of both the
immigrants and the building.
Keeping the abandoned music factory as a central focus point in
my story, I am trying to explore the social changes (xenophobia,
political rise of far-right parties/surge in racist attacks) taking
place in a country – Greece – that has recently been transformed
from migrant sending to migrant receiving country.

I revisited the Columbia compound various times from 2010
until my last visits in 2013. Police evacuated the building in
January 2012 but some immigrants still found shelter until June
2013 when the run down building was finally sealed.

My earlier photographic training and work focused more on fine art and still life/interiors. I worked for ten years in studios collaborating with advertising agencies and magazines.
In 2006 I changed my way�I �discovered� documentary photography.
For the past four years I have been free-lancing as a photojournalist in Athens as well as continuing with a number of personal projects.
Studies:
2010, MA in Photojournalism & Documentary Photography at the London College of Communication, London, UK.
2010, Eddie Adams Workshop New York, USA.
2008, Foundry Photojournalism workshop in Mexico City with Kadir Van Lohuizen.
2006, workshop in Kashmir, India with Gary Knight of VII agency.
1992, HND on Photography at the Arts Institute at Bournemouth, England. 1989, BA on Economics at the University of Piraeus, Greece.