Focus on Portraiture: Maria Mavropoulou: Family Portraits

Focus on Portraiture: Maria Mavropoulou: Family Portraits by Aline SmithsonJanuary 29, 2021

©Maria Mavropoulou, The Lovers, from the Family Portrait Series

Technology has become such a ubiquitous part of who we are, so much so that our computers, iPads, and cell phones are as much a portrait of ourselves, than, well, ourselves. Maria Mavropoulou has created a series of portraits where our technology stands in for our flesh and blood selves, providing a re-imagining of the subject/object relationship. In her project, Family Portraits, the irony of our addiction to our screens reveals that we don’t have time or desire to interact with those right in front of us because those on the other side of the screen capture our attention in a more profound way. Her portraits of ghostly empty screens in familiar spaces are ultimately a dispiriting look at contemporary human connections and begs the question of what validates us more, the screen or reality.

Maria Mavropoulou was born in 1989 and she lives and works in Athens, Greece. She completed her MFA studies in 2018, at Athens School of Fine Arts, from where she got her BA in 2014. She has studied painting and sculpture, although her main medium is photography while her work expands to new forms and uses of the photographic image, such as VR. The resulting images are at the boundary line between plausibility or not, potentiality and non-potentiality, random and constructed.
Playing with the perception of viewers she aspires to question the role and power of photography in an era that is dominated by it.

Her work has been presented in numerous exhibitions in Greece and abroad and publicized in multiple magazines. IG @maria.mavropoulou/

©Maria Mavropoulou, The Hug, from the Family Portrait Series

Family Portraits

The screens of the connectable devices we use are the only way we can have access to this parallel man-made universe, the Internet. Our lives have changed, from the simplest task to the way we perceive the world around us. Those devices guide us trough the real world, they answer our questions, they advice us and keep us company day and night. We look at them, touch them and talk to them in almost an intimate way.

Acknowledging these facts made me look at these devices from a different perspective. In this series I create family portraits of devices, reversing the subject/object relation. In this casual scenery of our everyday life, our comfort zones this multitude of glowing immersive gates, like an opposite of black holes, promise limitless possibilities. Information, entertainment, human connection and much more, are available anywhere and anytime, breaking the physical bond with the reality that surrounds us.

Never before had communication been so easy. Social networks and countless applications are created to serve our constant need for human connection but is there any chance that we have achieved the opposite?

Having for the first time in history such an easy and direct access to a huge and constantly increasing volume of information has made us wiser or are we just creating a detailed and multidimensional mirror of ourselves where we constantly seek our reflection as a confirmation of our existence? Or do these ‘’extensions of our hands’’ have actually replaced our best friends, our family or even our lovers?