Aris Georgiou

Aris Georgiou was born on December 4, 1951, in Thessaloniki. He studied architecture in Montpellier, France, where he also obtained a D.E.A. postgraduate diploma in urban planning. He returned to Thessaloniki in 1978 and initially engaged in translations (Boris Vian, "I Will Spit on Your Graves," published by Ypo Skepsi, and John Chilton, "The History of Jazz," published by Ypodomi). For six years, he collaborated with the radio (1979-1985, ERT Macedonia) on programs about photography, contemporary art, and music. Since 1977, he has exhibited his paintings and photographs in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Greece and abroad and is a member of the Association of Visual Artists of Northern Greece. In 1984, he was a founding member and board member of PARALLAXIS, an association for the promotion of creative photography, which organized the first international photography events in Greece in May 1985. In May 1987, he co-founded the Hellenic Museum of Photography. In February 1988, he conceived and organized for fifteen years the Photographic Encounter, the annual international photography festival in Thessaloniki. In 1995, he was a member of the Ministry of Culture's Working Group for structuring a National Policy for Artistic Photography and was elected to the Board of Directors of the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in 1996, 1998, and 2004. As a collaborator of the artistic and literary magazine Entefktirio, he launched the special photography insert titled Camera Obscura, which has so far presented 70 individual portfolios of Greek and foreign photographers. In 1998, the Minister of Culture appointed him director of the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography for a four-year term. He left the museum in 2002, bequeathing the Photographic Encounter to it. His professional activities focus on architecture and, to a significant extent, the graphic arts, usually when they pertain to cultural interests.