Icecaps and glaciers, spouting geysers and steaming solfataras, volcanoes, raging rivers, magnificent waterfalls and razorbills.
Iceland’s many geological wonders are captured by Fokion Zissiadis’ lens with a deliberate, watchful and penetrating gaze, revealing the distinctive identity of this land.
Zissiadis’ gaze possesses the quality of introverted poetry, carefully composed and systematically encapsulated, yet restlessly intense and vibrant. His archetypal images evoke a photographic journey along the rugged paths of everyday memory, nature’s anaglyph and the recognition of uniqueness.
Zissiadis listens to nature’s voice. He comes vis-à-vis with the voices and details of each place. He searches for the truth of nature in relation to human beings, unspoken against a horizon that provides him with the finest light. His black-and-white photographs express an almost deterministic coherence. His vision achieves a pristine clarity that anticipates the faithful representation of each image.
As an explorer and citizen of the world, his motto remains firm: “See, feel, create.” His understanding of light serves as a reflection of the subtle interplay that light itself creates.
Although Zissiadis, as a photographer, has immersed himself in the mystical realm of nature, he has developed his own distinctive style, almost like a film director observing nature’s boundless associations. His lyrical approach allows nature itself to become an active participant in the process of artistic creation.
The triptych of “rock, water and earth” serves Zissiadis as an Eden-like connection that engages, on a psychological level, with vision and memory. Both gradually come to resemble life itself and will, one day, become part of an archive.
About Fokion Zissiadis
Fokion Zissiadis (born in 1956 in Thessaloniki) is a Greek architect, explorer, and landscape photographer. After a decades-long career as a tourism executive, he transitioned to full-time photography and adventure travel in 2016. His global expeditions have allowed him to capture remote geological phenomena and diverse landscapes. He often incorporates small human figures into his expansive compositions to emphasise the scale of humanity against the majesty of the natural world.
His work has been exhibited internationally, including a solo exhibition at the Benaki Museum in Athens in 2019, curated by Stavros Kavalaris. The exhibition explored the dual nature of icebergs above and below the waterline through the lens of Archimedes’ principle.
His publications include books produced in collaboration with major international publishing houses, such as Vietnam (Rizzoli, 2020), which received the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs National Publication Award, as well as several fine-art photography books published by teNeues.
Zissiadis is currently working on another large-scale photography book documenting the intricate landscapes of the historic Silk Road in Central Asia, alongside an upcoming book on Lamu scheduled for publication in 2027. [Official Website]
