Visualcult
Interview with George Natsioulis
Born in Greece 1982, George Natsioulis started getting serious with photography at the early age of 15. This has had a tremendous impact in the way he sees the world, which has a notorious influence from graphic design in a consistently minimalist way. His inspiration however came from various photographers he grew up watching to. A healthy practice that many photographers need to reinforce, especially in these days were printed imagery is getting more and more scarce. Many of his photos depict isolated human beings on the streets, something extremely difficult to achieve when you think about it. Patience and a keen eye has gained him some highly aesthetic photographs on the streets.
F. We always like to begin with this one, “street photography” has nearly infinite interpretations.
Please tell us your own and personal definition of what street photography means to you.
G. When I started working on photography and I had acquired my first DSLR I liked to photograph landscapes as well as various artistic events. Later I was professionally involved with commercial photography. My preoccupation with the street began in the last 2-3 years, but I always admired it as I had never been able to deal with the particular genre. When I was more intensively involved and started entering the human element in my photos then I realized how much I love it and love it! Over time I try to improve as much as I can.
F. Your style is consistent and has a nice minimal design feeling. How do you manage to perfectly isolate subjects on the streets?
G. Yes, it happens in several photos of me but not always because I’m fond of minimal most photos inspire me minimalism. I try to convey this minimalism in the street photography, which results in most of my photographs having one at most two human elements and in combination with the simple and clean lines the viewer can easily understand the Image without being confused.
F. It is great to see the evolution of your work thanks to Instagram. What tells you nowadays that you have a keeper in your hands after shooting a frame?
G. A few years ago, when social media was not in our daily lives, you had to run your own exhibitions and travel alone to become recognizable. Now Instagram you can give you opportunities such as to get to know people from every corner of the globe, to recognize your work and why not to give you career opportunities.
F. Newcomers have a lot of concerns about gear and techniques. What advice could you tell them in order avoid being obscured by such topics?
G. With the passing of time technology and in particular, photography is evolving rapidly. There are many gears and techniques that can help you to develop your abilities. My advice is that you need to be patient and persistent you can get to a good level and your work can be accepted by the general public.
F. Just like our first question, how could you define “Minimalism”?
My goal of minimalism in photography is to convey a concept or an idea, to provoke an emotional response, or provide a unique visual experience. Minimalism depends on simplicity, negative space, and involves using a minimal amount of compositional components such as shapes, colors, and lines. Ι Believe the Minimalism forces people to view the world around them differently.
George’s work is a clear example of how style gets developed through time in small baby steps that might not seem clear at first. Minimalism gets deeply reinforced by shadows, and that is a key part of his signature. But beyond that, color is what the greatest impact in how his own vision of the world gets ultimately tweaked out into making him possible to express in images what he sees.
