Published: July 2018

Six standalone sections witness the interdependent relationship between existence and communication under the broader title of The Greek Icon. They alternate and complement each other like the components of an imposing mural. They are linked by the bonds of memory, not in the sense of yearning or personal memory but in the memory that comprises and gives value to circumstances and different life forms, to events, behaviours, the social and natural landscape of a country, in both rural and urban milieus.

“The image of Greece always presented a challenged to me”, Andreas Zacharatos says. Through a wide-ranging collection of photographs spanning 1979 to 2018, the photographer strives to depict himself in relation to the land where he was born and lives; the random, the tangible, and often the unobserved, the unknown, the timely, the devoutness, childhood, the ordinary folk, the ancient memory, small snapshots from the day to day but also ones that highlight the differentiations within the same land. The collection also suggests the painstaking preparation, the persistence, and unrelenting research to enable the capturing in a plastic—harmonious—manner the spirit of contemporary Greece in shades of grey.

“Years of Innocence.” “Land.” “In God We Trust.” “Periphery.” “The Town Opposite Me.” “Synthesis.” Under these headings, the collection of images in The Greek Icon sets us on a journey, activating our critical faculties, emotions, and the reminder that everything we see is happening or happened, that many of us have experienced it and have responded to it and we thus recognise our local and national selves in the images.

_{Jenny Lykourezou, Photographer - Curator}

Andreas Zacharatos’s latest work, The Greek Icon, comes to verify the photographer’s authenticity and adds to the art of photography another honest approach to the real human experience.

_{Spyros Skiadopoulos, Director Leica Akademie Greece}

In his new book, Andreas Zacharatos trains his lens on all of Greece, attempting to outline a contemporary but also timeless portrait of Greece through various thematic chapters.

_{Takis Tzimas, Publisher, Photographos magazine}