Medusa
Romain Bagnard
It is in Athens that this series of photos came into being with the story of Athena's birth* which never left my mind all along my stay there. I was captivated by the urgency and the power of Athena bursting out of her father's skull.
It was that same brutal urgency I could feel as I walked the town between the district of Exarchia (an anarchist and anti- establishment area of Athens in which one can find side by side self- managed places, students, asylum seekers, dealers but also now repression and gentrification) and the area around Omonia square (where one can pass Indo-Pakistanis but also prostitutes, dealers and drug- addicts shooting up in the open).
Urgency of life, of survival, of challenging, of self- assertion. This myth found echo in me and seemed to find one in every single street I crossed.