Photographer Antonis Giakoumakis is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the project ‘Insignificance’. To see Antonis’ body of work, click on any photograph.

Of all the characteristics of the modern world, crises, contradictions,

oppositions, intersections… what impresses me the most is the insignificance….

Cornelius Kastoriadis

Phenomenal? Subjective? I wonder!

Can you create something when you don’t think it’s important?

Can you move away from what we call “objectively” important topics such as social, philosophical, research, etc. and work with the lack of the quality of the important?

Can insignificance be interpreted via visual arts?

Do our insignificant choices and our insignificant actions outline our personality?

Αre they what define us?

What I understand is that something that may be important to me, may not be to others. In other words, things that I notice through some small details such as sensitivity, nostalgia, poetry, enhanced painting etc. may be invisible to someone else.

With this series of photographs, the (apparent) insignificance depicted in part of the image or in the whole, tries to highlight the concept of the insignificant in order to make its presence felt and perhaps understand any of its meaning, which is subjectively distinct.

Many times I have the need to leave behind, even for a while, topics that trouble me and focus on simple everyday issues, events… on Insignificances, which in the end are my interiority, my subjectivity, my experiences… my own human insignificance, to thus unintentionally create a new reality or better consciousness that I feel the need to share, with the expectation of understanding.

In this search I found the question, “what is unimportant?” it simultaneously contains the dilemma … “and which is important?”

In this thematic, I always had the difficulty of deciding whether this image is related to the “idea” of the insignificant, since its peculiarity lies in the subjective dimension of the concept of importance.

But our obsessions, our whims, the views we have of things, are the “insignificances” that distinguish one from the other, after all!!

I was born and raised in Chania, Crete. Now I live in Chalandri, Attica. 

I have been dealing with photography systematically since 2012, until then I was absorbed by IT for 37 years!

I have attended many seminars and I have participated in group exhibitions and competitions.

Photography, one or more click that capture an event, a scene, immobilizing time in the space where it takes place. This inadvertently creates a new reality or better an awareness that you feel the need to share with others, with the expectation of understanding. Yes, the photo is not objective! It’s a constant reminder that the world is not what we see….

The photographic record transforms into an emotion at the moment of capture, capturing a fleeting memory. I consider photography to be the art of perception as a result of a “representation” of unpredictable moments.

Anyway, human life is full of images, events that are registered in our memories like photographs.