Constantinos Sideris is a Greek photographer living in Nicosia, Cyprus, whose work tends to be dominated by architectural, interior/exterior, and “geometrical” photography. His classy-looking website features two personal projects that he calls “Lyricism of Parallel Realities” and “d3LIRIUM.” That first is a collection of still life images that help dispel all of the myths and clichés about what still life photographs should look like and embraces light, shadow, and shape in what could be called an extraterrestrial way. In “d3LIRIUM” he turns off the color and moves into a Hitchcockian world with visual references to films such as Rear Window, Psycho, and Rope. This is not the kinder, gentler Sideris, but one who looks at the dark side of life with some creepy (although not deliciously so) images.
All of which is contrapuntal to his colorful and decidedly sunny exterior architectural images. The “Geometry” gallery contains echoes of “Lyricism of Parallel Realities” applied to larger spaces mostly in monochrome and always interesting in an Escher-lite way. In his “Old Town” gallery Sideris embraces the history, texture, and warmth (in color anyway) of the architecture of Nicosia, producing what reminds me of a Cypriot version of Clarence John Laughlin’s “Ghost of the Mississippi”—translated many thousands of miles away. A clever technician, Sideris is visually excited by shapes that he applies to images of his world as well as parts of his own inner space.
