(deviant) Artist's other projects: Independents Biennial in Liverpool, Oliver Evelyn-Rahr

Found photographic prints, Kardamena, 2003

Working as a swimming teacher on the Greek island of Kos one summer, I chanced upon these images scattered across a street one night.

The several dozen prints had been badly kicked about, many in an irretrievable state and this selection comprises all those that I salvaged. How the prints came to be scattered I am not sure.

I believe the portraits were taken on board a small cruise ship in the town harbour with the intention of selling them back, to the tourists pictured, after the cruise. Many such boats operate out of Kardemena harbour to visit the volcanic island of Nisyros.

I find this collection fascinating because, while the portrait style is very straightforward and traditional so many of the subjects seem not to be posing. They are formal portraits of very relaxed people, captured as they were found.

Their public exhibition together in Liverpool four years later raises interesting issues about the ownership of our images, continues the narrative, by proxy, of the subjects involved and mirrors their original journey. Their presence next to each other as part of a collection, links irreversibly, otherwise separate lives and commemorates unmarked moments from the past.

Oliver Evelyn-Rahr, November 16th 2006