WOMEN'S GLANCES
Wandering through the streets of Greece, Antonis Giakoumakis captures the subtle poetry in women’s glances — fleeting expressions that unfold like scenes from an intimate street theatre.
May 27, 2022
PICTORIAL STORY
photography ANTONIS GIAKOUMAKIS
words ANTONIS GIAKOUMAKIS
“If you bend over to your fellow human beings in their indifferent eyes will be written your loneliness is hopeless, total.”
-
Katerina Angelaki-Rook (Loneliness)
-min.jpg)
Wandering around the corners of Greece, I unconsciously captured with my lens mainly women's looks.
I'm not looking to find the "folklore", the kerchief, but the look. This is what attracts me, and I want to capture it with my lens.
The look of the grandmothers so expressive to give, sometimes, a sweetness to their dug face.
Women's looks, glances.
From open windows, from half-open doors, there on the street. Observers of life.
Faces gloomy, exploratory, indifferent, puzzled.
Women's looks tired but also smiling.
After the home care, for a walk, for a visit to the neighbour, for weggera at home.
The need for extroversion brings them to the fore, as does the need for work from the field to the bazaar.
Familiar images that I have relived in the past, where I was born. If possible, I would like to go back in time to meet with human eyes again, in humble places… churches, abandoned villages, deserted streets…
They are my experiences and my obsessions!
Women's glances.
Unexpected scene, in a street theater without spectators and applause.
Everyday life.
Faces clearly cut off from urban interference. They calm my soul.
The journey will continue, and you know, somewhere on the road I might meet the look of a grandmother...one mother!!
Antonis Giakoumakis’s photography is an act of remembrance — an intimate chronicle of everyday life in rural Greece, seen through the quiet dignity of women’s gazes. His portraits do not seek drama or spectacle. Instead, they draw power from subtlety: a glance from a window, a furrowed brow in the shade of an old doorway, the weight of time etched in a smile. These are not just images; they are echoes of lives lived in rhythm with the land, shaped by care, work, and quiet resilience.
After a long career in IT, Antonis turned to photography as a way of holding on — to places, to faces, to fleeting moments that might otherwise be forgotten. His work is deeply personal, rooted in memory and longing, yet it speaks universally. Through his images, Antonis reminds us of the beauty in the overlooked, and of the profound stories waiting in the simplest of human encounters.
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