Yiannis Pallis lives and works in Athens. He studied graphic design & visual communication and holds an MA in Photography: Research and Methodology. Studies that became fundamental skills in his long career in the advertising industry, where he works as an art / creative director. His first camera was an old SLR, found at the back seat of his father’s taxi. He started capturing the world from then on, agreeing with Winogrand’s quote “I photograph not because of, rather despite what”. His personal work revolves around image making and storytelling with a multidisciplinary approach. Writing, also, constitutes significant role in the process and his work in general.
His long practice of psychoanalysis has a profound influence on his work and through its prism he develops a photographic discourse based on the dialectic between the symbolic and imaginary, the significant and the elliptical. His artistic pursuit is, thus, to explore notions of selfhood, subjectivity and desire and the ways these notions define the human condition both individually and collectively. Consequently, the camera’s viewpoint acts in a double level, as a coping mechanism for reality’s stream of stimuli, as well as an intermediate between the external world and his internal condition. Ultimately, his aspires for the viewer to stand critical before the artwork, therefore the world, recollect and even reconsider about well established psychological patterns, consolidated beliefs and fixed meanings.
Currently, Yiannis is working on a new photographic study on the “behind the camera” world of commercial filming and develops his first short film, in collaboration with a group of selected associates, supported by the Greek national film institute.