Nikos Aliagas. Regards Vénitiens Claimed

Venetian gazes

Nikos Aliagas. Regards Vénitiens is a photographic exhibition born from a artist-in-residence programme begun in Venice in 2022.  Nikos Aliagas (Paris, 1969) travels through the Venetian alleyways meeting that rare demographic, the inhabitants of the city, ever intent on avoiding the tourists’ lenses.

This project originally took root in the artist’s soul when Nikos Aliagas first visited the lagoon and experienced its mysterious and fascinating appeal. At that moment, he came up with the idea of taking a deeper look at Venice, exploring the world that revolves around Palazzo Vendramin Grimani. Nikos Aliagas’ lens seeks out the extraordinary daily life and views of Campo San Polo and its surrounding sestiere, or district, allowing the images to tell the stories of those who live in these places and bring them to life. Nikos Aliagas takes photographs

in black and white. In them, the artist explores contrasts, backlighting and movement in frames that portray straight and curved lines, such as a face or the corner of an alleyway. 

“Is it still possible to improvise in Venice? In a city photographed millions of times by as many passing eyes?” “Yes,” replies the artist, “if you take your cue from the fact that it is Venice that looks at us and observes us.”

A journalist and a TV and radio host of international renown, Nikos Aliagas is also a self-taught photographer whose gentle outlook has already resulted in thirty exhibitions throughout Europe. Through his “pilgrimage of observation”, he has immortalised Venice as a place brimming with humanity, secrets, far-off echoes, through hands and faces furrowed by the passage of time; day-to-day moments or landscapes he chooses by instinct. “Venice does not wait for you,” says Aliagas.

“The city of the Doges has a space-time dimension of its own, a wholly personal view of the noisy crowds that throng its streets. You can almost feel the city’s indifference to those who want to capture it with their camera. It’s actually them watching us. Nowhere else have I felt this strange sensation of being observed by thousands of eyes, by the eyes of yesterday and today.”

Behind his camera, Nikos Aliagas doesn’t capture faces like a collector would; instead, he tries to capture the essence of each person, the mystery of our fleeting existence. The traces of time are, in fact, one of the favourite topics of Nikos Aliagas the artist, who aims to capture a moment suspended in time in the relentless finiteness of a lifetime. His exhibitions attest this research with tenderness and nostalgia.

The Artist

Born to Greek parents, Nikos Aliagas became a French national at the age of 18. After graduating in Modern Literature from the Sorbonne, he worked for RFI and Radio Notre-Dame before joining Euronews. A polyglot, a journalist, and a TV and radio host, he has reported for the programme Union Libre on France 2, has been a newsreader on Greek television, and has presented the NRJ morning programme and several other morning and evening radio programmes on Europe 1. He has been working for TF1 for over 20 years, presenting popular programmes such as Star Academy and The Voice, as well as numerous other entertainment programs that have brought to the limelight some of France’s leading singers. 

Nikos Aliagas is also a photographer. His works are exhibited in “L’épreuve du temps”, both in France (La Grande Arche, La Conciergerie, DIDAM in Bayonne, Christie’s…) and abroad (Belgium, Switzerland, Greece…). A photographer with a gentle outlook, Nikos Aliagas offers a view of the world that is brimming with humanity, through hands and faces furrowed by the passage of time; day-to-day moments or landscapes that he highlights through the contrasting use of black and white. By showing empathy with the subjects he photographs, with an artistic sensibility verging on that of Salgado, Koudelka and Artikos, Nikos Aliagas

seeks to capture the essence of people, the mystery of their existence. His works have been published in the artist’s book L’épreuve du temps (2018), published by La Martinière. Photography has been an important part of Nikos Aliagas’ career for many years now, as confirmed by the exhibitions that host his works every year, both in France and abroad. He is regularly invited to take part in major projects, such as the City of Paris greeting card, the Amis du Louvre cultural patronage campaign, or the Paris Fire Department calendar.  Throughout his career as presenter, journalist and concert photographer, Nikos Aliagas has always sought to build bridges between these different worlds, putting the spotlight on the people he meets and the stories he tells, whether through the small screen or his camera lens.