Irina Vosgerau
NANUU - the Call of the Gioni
Photobook selfpublished
A gioni (otus scops) is a bird with a characteristic song that sounds like a whistle “gioon”. In Greek myth a man who killed his brother out of resentment calling him as a bird every evening.
“Nanuu” is about the Beauty and the Hardness of surviving in relation to nature and its laws.
It is about listening to the values developed by communities who lived - and survived for generations - in remote regions. There, where the rules of nature and of community seem crucial, indistinct but in a magical way caring for its sustainability and survival.
It is about values I have been apprenticed to by my Greek origin, feeling them regulating life with severity but kindness. Passed on through myths and oral tradition, through songs and rituals, being taught in a non-abusive, non-binary way.
In nowadays post-technological times I feel them threatened, wounded, extincted but resisting in a permanent struggle for life, for dignity and freedom.
The Book
Myth of Gioni
"They were two brothers always beloved,
they were grazing sheep for a great lord,
Gionis is called the one, Demos the other.
One day Gionis loses two lambs
He does not find them around and he cries.
He comes to his brother's house and tells it.
The brother was in his evil hour
unjustly, like a wild beast he gets angry,
the knife comes out and it kills.
The lambs came to the herd again
and the slayer sees them
standing weeping tilts head repentant.
And God saw him beating his breasts
crying night after day he wants to die
and he got stung and makes him a bird.
And for that at night when it’s getting dark
a sad bird sits on the tree branches
and it lasts all night ...
Gioni, Gioni, Gioni! »
Sound
A friend after seeing the pictures sent me this
Making-of
Making-of Nanuu means traveling with a dirtbike on unpaved paths, spending nights under the stars or besides free rivers, having coffee or tsipouro in one of the last "kafenion" in small mountain villages....
Making-of Nanuu means listening...
Listen to sound and whispers, to melodies and roaring, listen to the elders, to those who live there, listen to what they are giving you as a precious present. It may save lives. pay respect to life.
Through my pics I try to touch deeper (hidden) meanings and to communicate so as to regain my trust in both, nature and human activity. By learning to listen to those meanings we may find different, less destroying, less violent ways of dealing with our contemporary quests. If not with listening and respect, how will we proceed?
“Nanuu” is a work in progress
Its main subject has become – starting basicly as a project with philosophical approach – part of an uprising discussion on environmental, economical, social and cultural themes. The actuality on the discurs about so-called “Green Energy” investions by power producing industries in remote Greek regions and how this affects natural surroundings and coexistences in it
The only thing we can do is “remember”. Pictures remember.
Do things stop existing when we extinct memory? Can we make a progress without concidering our roots and where they are grounded, in Nature?
I want to bring this philosophical aspect into consideration, and I am working on two ongoing projects : One of them is “Nanuu”, which has to do with the change of environment by the impact of nowadays human acting on our natural and cultural background.
My point of view starts from my personal history , the loss of continuity of my grandfathers’ achievements.
Its also a question of power, of keeping down faintly voices, and a question of time. We always think in patterns of a human lifetime.
Things of the past do survive, for good or for bad. Its the challenge how we deal with this.
I want to use photography to make questions, to put light on things which I learned to give what they deserve: Respect