Recently, Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, who has become famous in the world film industry in recent years, held his first personal photography exhibition at the Webber Gallery in Los Angeles. The exhibition will last until May 24, including two collections of his works, "I shall sing these songs beautifully" and "Dear God, the Parthenon Is Still Broken", which are photos he took in the past few years on the sets and production breaks of the two films "Good Kind" and "Poor Things" in New Orleans and Budapest.
Lanthimos Photography Collection "I Will Sing These Songs Beautifully"
Lanthimos's photography collection: Dear God, the Parthenon is still in ruins
At the opening ceremony held on March 29, Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone, who starred in the above two films, attended together. Before the official opening, he also gave a brief speech to introduce the background of his shooting of these photos. "I have always been interested in photography. Like everyone else, I have always taken photos, but because I like filmmaking, I may be more proficient in technology. Back when I was shooting commercials, I often took photos on the set, mainly to capture some memories, or to record a specific moment, a scene, the role of an actor, etc., and I didn't take it too seriously. When I started shooting movies, when we were in Greece at the beginning, it was impossible to hire a professional still photographer, so I had to take pictures myself. That was for future publicity needs, but at the same time I also enjoyed it."
Over time, Lanthimos says he has become more fond of photography. "I like the freedom and simplicity of it compared to making a film. When I was shooting Poor Things, I started taking more photos, not just for documentation, but to see if I could find something else. That's when I started taking large black-and-white portraits of the actors. I also took photos of the set as it was being built and taken down, because it had a different kind of beauty in ruins, in contrast to the beauty of creation when it was being built. Later we put these photos together in a book, which became a testimony of that experience, and my first book was born, and that's when I started taking photos more seriously. When I took those photos in Budapest, there was no proper photo processing shop, so I built my own darkroom in the bathroom of my hotel room. When I returned to Athens to start editing Poor Things, I built a darkroom next to the editing room, and I became more serious about taking photos and started to learn how to develop them better."
Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone on the set of "Poor Things."
He wasn't the only one who developed those photos in the bathroom of the Budapest hotel. "A few years ago, Yorgos became interested in taking photos, and he started developing his own photos and taught me how to do it," recalled Emma Stone, who also attended the opening ceremony. "We started with a makeshift darkroom in his bathroom, and later he built a professional darkroom in his studio in Athens. In the beginning, he learned how to develop film almost by watching videos on YouTube."
The above photos were taken by Lanthimos on the set of "Poor Things"
“I’m self-taught,” Lanthimos adds with a laugh. “On Poor Things, Emma and I would sometimes go back to the hotel after a 12-hour day of shooting to develop the photos we had taken that day. During that time, she also learned how to process film and became obsessed with it. Developing the photos gave us strength in a way because the process was almost like meditation. I was under a lot of pressure on the set, and making a film is a very intense experience. But developing photos allows you to forget about that for a while.”
Lanthimos photographed Emma Stone on the set of The Good Kind
The above is a street scene of New Orleans taken by Lanthimos
In 2022, Lanthimos began filming the movie "The Kind Kind". This time he also took a lot of photos, but these black and white photos are no longer clearly related to the movie itself. Many of these photos were taken by him outside the studio and around New Orleans, where he was filming. "I came to a city I had never been to, looked around, and took pictures of the streets, people, trees or other things here," Lanthimos said. "This gave me more freedom and allowed me to open my heart."
“Photography is something I’ve been doing seriously in recent years, and it’s something I want to do more attentively in the future. Especially now, after I’ve made three films in a row, I need to take a breath and pause,” Lanthimos concluded. “The scale of releasing a film and holding a photography exhibition is of course different, but the excitement and nervousness of showing your work to people on a large scale for the first time, whether it’s on the big screen in a cinema or these large-scale photos hanging on the wall, is actually somewhat similar.”
It is reported that the film "Bugonia", the sixth collaboration between Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone, has been scheduled to be officially released in North America on November 7 this year, and is expected to premiere at this year's Venice Film Festival.
