"Everything's Good" is my latest and on-‐going project on the current socio-‐economic crisis in Greece. I started shooting in Athens in March 2012, and I plan to extend elsewhere in the country. “Everything’s Good”, as claimed by the former Greek Prime Minister Mr Papandreu, is my outlook on how the Greeks live the most tragic political chapter in their recent history. I point my camera to the ones most affected by the economical downfall and explore how capitalism is undermining society.
In 2008 the world of Finance collapsed creating a devastating domino effect throughout the world markets, which resulted in a global catastrophe.
Bailouts, job losses, foreclosure and bankruptcy have since been in the international media forefront, only to be temporarily overshadowed by headlines such as wars, natural disasters and political scandals among others.
The financial crisis though, has always been there, advancing relentlessly from country to country like a ghostly tsunami that picked and chose carefully its victims, the poor.
Greece is now on the spotlight, singled-out as the cancer-Nation that will pull into the drain the whole concept, and reality, of the European monetary union.
The IMF, ECB and EU have therefore increased their rigidity with regards to the austerity measures aimed to justify Greece’s bailout.
Problem is, that these measures are hitting only the lower and middle classes, bringing a country and the majority of its citizens to a stall.
One shop every three has closed down, almost one million and a half Greek have lost their jobs, suicides have reached unbearable numbers (2.3 a day in the last year), the centre of Athens is populated by prostitutes working on broad day light and heroine addicts injecting at every corner. AIDS has made a glorious come back from the eighties, while the health system is not able to support the increasing demand for drugs, specially the ones to cure chronic diseases such as cancer or clinical depression.
In Athens the already high social tensions has been exacerbated by the recent election results that saw the Neo-Nazi Golden Down party gaining seats on the parliament, for the first time in Greece Democracy. Clashes between right extremists and immigrants are consequently a daily scenario.
I have interviewed and photographed Greeks alongside immigrants coping with the current socio-economic crisis in Athens. I have photographed the decadent streets of Greece capital showing the raw signs of what the economic emergency, worsen by the austerity measures, have produced.
I have now reached a point of no return. I feel and I know I have to keep on working on the story, expanding what I have worked on before and add more stories from Athens and elsewhere in Greece. I have witnessed and photographed sufferance and social injustice in many other places in the world, but what makes this story new and vitally important to tell is that this tragedy is happening right inside Europe cultural, economical and political borders and it is happening on a national scale. The downfall of a blind capitalist system that has proven to be wrong and the collapse of which is helping us to identify the essential stages of how it operates.
Greece to me now represents an open wound, worthwhile to observe, analyse and expose in order to understand where we failed and where we can find our strength.