In just over 20 years, Yorgos Lanthimos has established himself as a whimsical and radical filmmaker exploring the human condition. With 10 feature films to his credit, his cinema has skillfully combined the absurd, romance, dystopian fable, social satire, tragicomic vice, intimate drama, surreal phantasmagoria… A reflective cocktail sprinkled with acerbic humor.
The Oscar-nominated Athenian, winner of several awards at Cannes and Venice, has thus managed to make a name for himself beyond his native Greece. First with Canine (Kynódontas, 2009), centered on children isolated from the outside world by their parents, then with The Lobster (2015), the first feature film in English, focuses on a dehumanized society where couple life is obligatory and celibacy is banned.
Leader of the “Greek Bizarre Wave,” Lanthimos takes great delight in tackling humanity’s most despicable and grotesque designs. Here, he swaps his camera for a stills camera. The Webber Gallery in Los Angeles, in collaboration with publisher Mack, is showcasing his first exhibition of photographs, a mix of color and black and white, which leads us into yet other realms.
Beyond the screen
“Every medium begins with the still image,” he recalls . His interest is therefore not new. The director learned the basics of photography at film school in his hometown, while also signing editorials and advertising and fashion campaigns over the years .
The works exhibited on the walls of the Californian space come from his two recent works: I shall sing these songs beautifully (Mack, 2024), from the filming of Kinds of Kindness, a triptych fable with dark humor, and Dear God , the Parthenon is Still Broken (Void, 2024), taken from that of Poor Things, her allegory Victorian and Baroque.
All these photographs question his desire to go beyond the backstage and the sets, beyond the filmmaking process: “Are there other types of images that I could create from this universe that we have staged?” His photographic approach thus offers a different perspective, occupying a liminal space between the dreamlike world of cinema and the real sets of New Orleans and those in the studio in Budapest.
The images thus reveal another narrative, more minimalist, suspended, suggestive, detached from time and space. Here, an empty swimming pool. There, fragmented bodies and averted faces. Elsewhere, poses of motionless, inert women, sometimes in a play of light and shadow. Further on, urban landscapes and a desolate street setting, strewn with scaffolding. Everything becomes strange, anachronistic, at a standstill, like the end of an action that has just taken place.
Reconstruction of a world
Lighting installations, reconstructed cities, and late 19th – century interior sets, built in London, Lisbon, Paris, and even on a cruise ship, serve as backdrops. Lanthimos plays with the intervals where the film crew has left the location, abandoning devices and objects that alone continue to weave imaginary stories, like this Prangl machine that looks like it has landed on Mars.
In the same way, Lanthimos offers another point of view on his actors and actresses. For example, Emma Stone, here shot in profile in an old-fashioned image, both sad and lost, far removed from the raincoat-clad Bella Baxter in Poor Creatures that won her the Oscar. Or Margaret Qualley (Kinds of Kindness), who seems to have stepped out of a silent film, her face just as sad and as if stained with blood.
From color to black and white, the Greek filmmaker probes the smallest details, observing his surroundings to reveal what lies hidden elsewhere. He gives the impression of wanting to reconstruct a fragmented world, diffusing an ever-disturbing atmosphere, otherwise calmer and more silent. A letting go where past and present confront each other in an indefinite space between reality and fiction.
To this end, the exhibition’s appeal is enhanced by the silver prints, taken from his own darkroom. Whether still or moving images, Lanthimos enjoys working on his film shots, which he feels give them a certain “gravity” and “depth,” but also “independence” and “openness .” He thus continues to combine technique with aesthetics to give free rein to the exploration and interpretation of his escaping universe.
The exhibition ” Yorgos Lanthimos: Photographs ” has been extended through June 21, 2025, at the Webber Gallery in Los Angeles. Several images in this exhibition are from i shall sing these songs beautifully (2024), published by Mack and available for £45.
