Calendar spans vintage silver gelatin prints, C-prints, and digital color prints from the early 1960s to the late 2000s. It chronicles the photographic life of Greek writer and artist George Tourkovasilis through discoveries made in the archive he left behind after his passing in 2021. A prolific image-maker, Tourkovasilis produced thousands of photographs throughout his life and moved fluidly between photographic media. Calendar offers a snapshot portrait of this continuum, introducing, among others and for the first time, his later digital works, which explore an aesthetic of abstraction, radical zooming, and experimental editing. In these photographs, one can trace Tourkovasilis’ restless curiosity and evolving vision—an artist in perpetual engagement with the world around him, unbound by the expectations of professionalized practice.
Known mostly for his documentary work capturing the rock and punk scenes of Athens, as well as the illegal motorcycle races of Keratsini during the post-dictatorship era, Tourkovasilis’ adjacent practice—focused on intimate moments from daily life, portraits of lovers and friends, and appropriated images from magazines or television—remains less known. The particular selection of images that makes up Calendar has never been shown before, allowing for an open-ended and fragmentary introduction to a world that was largely kept private and unaccounted for.
Rather than adhering to a single unifying principle, the exhibition traces Tourkovasilis’ instinctual gravitation toward scenes and figures whose significance or identity remains largely without context. What ultimately grounds Calendar is the passage of time itself—and the parallel evolution of Tourkovasilis’ engagement with different photographic media. The exhibition can be read as an improvised diary, or a disordered calendar, where timelines intersect but never fully resolve. It is also inseparable from questions surrounding archival practice and the ethical considerations of interpretative mediation carried out posthumously, beyond the artist’s own direction. Ultimately, it allows us to see another facet of Tourkovasilis’ practice, foregrounding conceptual strategies such as appropriation or abstraction—not as tactical self-positioning or as deliberate alignment with contemporaneous approaches by artists like Richard Prince or Sherrie Levine, but rather as isolated gestures that resonate in parallel, retrospectively echoing broader image-making strategies.
Bio
George Tourkovasilis is known to a wider audience as the author and illustrator of The Rock Diaries [Τα Ροκ Ημερολόγια] (Odisseas, 1984)—the archetypal book of Greece’s underground music scene of the 1970s and 1980s. He was also the personal photographer and longtime assistant of Yannis Tsarouchis, who hired him in 1969 in Paris to photograph models and scenes for his paintings. A graduate of the Law School of Athens, Tourkovasilis harbored an unfulfilled dream of directing, with Costas Gavras as his mentor from 1962 to 1967. In 1968, he left his postgraduate studies and cinematic ambitions to move to Paris, where he settled for the next ten years. In addition to his collaboration with Tsarouchis, Tourkovasilis worked professionally as a portrait photographer, capturing Tsarouchis’ models outside of work, as well as Greek artists at the Cité Universitaire, including Silia Daskopoulou and Periklis Korovesis. Of particular interest are his photographs of intimate moments with partners and friends, alongside a series of images that blur the line between posed fashion photography and playful experimentation. Tourkovasilis returned to Greece in August 1976. In the spring of 1980, the Photographic Center of Athens presented his first solo exhibition, Faces and Spaces [Πρόσωπα και Χώροι], which initiated a years-long collaboration with Giorgos Chronas and Odos Panos Publications, for which he frequently contributed both articles and photographs. His work with Chronas on the book Motorcycle Rites [Τελετές Μοτοσυκλέτες] (Odisseas, 1981) marked a pivotal point in his career, capturing a photographic portrait of the illegal motorcycle races in Keratsini. Recent exhibitions include: HER, Radio Athènes (2025); George Tourkovasilis at Paris Internationale with RECORDS (2024); Ah, This! (curated by Helena Papadopoulos), Felix Gaudlitz, Vienna; Stay Hungry, Ermes Ermes, Rome (2023); Ithaca, Herald St, London (2023); Spent, (curated by Maya Tounta), Akwa Ibom, Athens; Strange Switch, (curated by Andreas Melas), Melas Martinos; The Night, Sleep (curated by Helena Papadopoulos), Radio Athènes (2022); and Anti-Structure, (curated by Andreas Melas), Deste, Athens (2021). A monograph designed by Julie Peeters, published by BILL, edited by Helena Papadopoulos, Julie Peeters, and Maya Tounta appeared in October 2025. Tourkovasilis’ estate is represented by Akwa Ibom, Radio Athènes, and Melas Martinos.
The exhibition was made possible through the generous support of the Carved to Flow Foundation. With special thanks to Natasha Koliou and the George Tourkovasilis Estate.