I was born in Athens in 1945. My memories of childhood are only good: I think some mechanism of self-defence erased all the bad ones, which there certainly must have been. My progress through my youthful studies was easy and predictable. Art had no special role to play for me as a boy, though it was ever-present in the family bookcase, in the musical soirées with live chamber music which my parents held at home, in the gramophone evenings (with ice-cream served in the intervals) of the early Fifties, in frequent visits to museums and archaeological sites, in my mother playing the piano, and later, after I was twelve, in the Sunday-morning showings at the cinema club. Even so - perhaps because I was afraid, or perhaps because I had no inclination towards anything in particular - I did not display even the slightest talent for artistic creation.

After high school at the Varvakeio, and perhaps because I also had no talent for science, I went to the Law School of Athens University (whose doors were always open to those who had failed to make up their minds), from which I graduated in 1968, at a time of turmoil for the international student movement and of the stifling conditions of dictatorship in Greece. For that reason, I imagined that political science was the appropriate way forward for me, and so I spent the period until 1970 studying in Paris without either enthusiasm or much success. Then, without really being aware how it had happened, I found myself practising law in Athens. It was quite a few years before I felt the first real questions arising and calling my career into question. Above all, I wanted to be able to wake up in the morning feeling inquisitive and enthusiastic about what the day would bring, and I wanted to have an ethical motive for self-improvement. It seems that practising law was unable to satisfy those two desires. If I remember correctly, the desire to do something artistic came before my choice settled on photography: quite apart from the fact that I was already fond of photography and knew a little about it, it struck me as the most accessible art-form. Within just a few years, photography had come to take up all my time.

I learned about photography by reading a large number of books (both technical and theoretical) and by practising on my own. In 1983, a desire to meet other photographers took me to America for a few months; my most significant experience there was meeting Gary Winogrand, one of whose seminars I attended. In 1981, I began teaching photography to small groups in a studio (the Studio Quark) I had set up in Arachovis St. Since that time, I have taught in various schools, universities and private institutions: the Pantio University, the University of La Verne, the Moraitis School, Athens College, the Focus School of Photography, the Leica Academy School of Photography, and elsewhere. But over time I came to understand that I was interested primarily in students who, regardless of age, would choose my course out of needs and desires of their own and not because they wanted to get their hands on a qualification, though that is not to say that the students of the various schools were not competent, conscientious and careful. As a result, I have in the last few years confined my teaching to the classes at the "Photography Circle".

The need to set up the association called the "Photography Circle" arose out of my teaching. I identified myself with my students so closely that I began to suffer when I saw so many people with talent or even genius and skills melting away when the course came to an end because (quite rightly) they did not wish to become professional practitioners of the art and were unable to tolerate the loneliness and doubts of creation. I thus decided to offer them - and myself - the luxury of a circle of friends or a family based on bonds connected with the selection of beliefs, objectives and a view of art and the cosmos. For the last ten years, that family - the Photography Circle association - has been growing and enhancing itself with members who espouse its credo and support its existence. Among the characteristics of the group of friends are a continuous 'amateur' involvement with photography, a need to expand their knowledge of art, respect for the photography (and art in general) of earlier times, and a desire to communicate. The Circle has an extensive library, a fully-equipped darkroom, a hall for meetings and lectures, and a little gallery which also serves as a café and which, to date, has hosted numerous exhibitions, chiefly of work by Greek photographers.

For me, the Circle is a home, a place which perhaps takes up more of my time than my own photography but which with that photography, my teaching and my writing goes to make up an entity called 'my creative photographic activities'. To involve myself every day with photographs taken by other people does not mean that I deprive myself of my own work or distance myself from it; in fact, it reinforces my own work, and serves as a preliminary to it. Perhaps I take fewer photographs than before, since the Circle occupies so much of my time, but when I pick up my camera all the hours I spent on the Circle, on my students and on my books are there to inspire me and help me to make up what would have appeared to be lost ground, giving me the knowledge necessary to make choices of greater precision.

Apart from the seminars at the "Photography Circle", I have also had the opportunity to lead many short seminars in towns all over Greece. The initial incentive for these expeditions arose about twelve years ago, when, on the initiative of its valuable associate Vasilis Spiliopoulos, the General Secretariat of Adult Education assigned me the task of organising model photography departments all over Greece and of training the instructors who would teach in them. I was thus able to see the wish of people outside Athens for closer contact with, and a better knowledge of, artistic creation - and their capacity for attaining it. These photographic and educational expeditions also took me to Cyprus, where once again I found an open-minded and friendly audience.

Even when taking my first steps as a teacher, I felt the need to write educational handbooks for my students. The first edition of "Photography", a compilation of technical information, appeared in 1986. It was followed by "Monologue on Photography", which contains my personal views on art and photography; each new edition of the book is enhanced with new texts which I have written for various other publications. My most recent theoretical text was "Thoughts on Photography", where once more I explain my personal views on the history of photography and comment on quite a number of photographs by famous photographers. The books, consequently, are nothing more or less than the contents of the classes I teach. Perhaps all I have left to write is a book on the method of approaching photographs critically, a subject which I deal with in my advanced seminars. Over and above these theoretical works, I have also tried now and again to publish brief collections of my own photographs (Dance Photographs, Ruins, Light and Silence) so as to leave behind some trace of my work, which I believe amounts almost to an obligation for anyone who involves himself with art. I have tried to encourage a similar attitude in my students.

I can think of no mode of learning, or of communication, better than books. Books taught me what little I know, and of course they showed me how to look at photographs. The process of assembling what is now a large collection (3,000 titles) of books in the "Photography Circle" library began in 1978, when I first decided to find out how photography functions and bought my first Kertész.

I have to admit that I am often made indignant by the appalling work I see in those books. But my indignation does not prevent me from supporting each and every publication, no matter how bad it may be, because that is the way we can communicate. It is also a way we can learn, even if we are only learning about bad work. Behind the view that a photographer should only publish his best work (however we define that) and only when he is artistically mature lurks arrogance or fear; it overlooks the fact that no artist ever reaches final maturity or can ever say that he has reached the point of producing his best images. Publication is a brief stop, a pause in the process of creation: nothing more. Otherwise, no book ought to be published until its author was on his deathbed, at which point, of necessity, he could be regarded as mature and would certainly not be about to improve his work. To attribute metaphysical or supernatural qualities to a book is to do it a disservice.

Exhibitions of photography are common and they may be useful, but to my mind they are not entirely appropriate to the kind of photography of which I, at least, am most fond. Books, on the other hand, promote more inward, lasting and personal communication with the work and the artist. Strangely enough, books are not usually regarded as enviable supplements to the CVs that artists are so fond of writing about themselves: perhaps because they say nothing about high fees or about galleries, and no reference to painting is inherent in them.

It would seem, unfortunately enough, that since art in the post-War period became a commercial commodity and since the artist became a producer, those CVs have acquired a disproportional significance. Even more unfortunately, young artists set about working principally to flesh out their CVs and less for the sake of the work itself. Nowadays, the important things to add to a CV are degrees, exhibitions, the galleries at which the photographer has exhibited or which represent him, and the institutions which have bought his work. As a result, photographers rely for their value on the reputation of third parties. I do not think that I would be interested in finding out anything about an artist other than what is contained in his work. Perhaps I might like to know his date of birth, but even that is not essential. On the other hand, I might want to find out a tremendous amount - so much that only a personal conversation would be enough. But his studies, his exhibitions and his publications leave me cold: after all, I am not thinking of giving him a job, just hoping that I will like his work. If I do like it, I am completely indifferent to whether his photographs are in the National Library of France, whether he has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, or whether he took part in Photography Month in one city or another. If, one the other hand, I was going to buy or sell his work and was attempting to assess his value in financial terms, then the CV would be important: it would have the same significance as a pedigree does for a show dog, and not of course for our beloved mongrel.

In parallel with my books, I felt a desire to publish a periodical on art photography. The periodical, called "Photohoros" («photo-space») as are our books, our café and every other parallel activity undertaken by the association, has managed to establish itself and build up a small but loyal band of readers.

The power of the television image, which twenty years ago led André Malraux to argue that it was the transformation of the future, impelled me to make two series of programmes for Greek television on the subjects of the great photographers and thinking about photography. The series, one of which was for educational television, were made in collaboration with the director Yannis Economidis. I think the programmes were a success, and that they gave quite a number of people their first opportunity to communicate with creative photography. What struck me, however, was the magic that fixed images could exert on the television screen, inextricably associated for many with motion which is continuous to the point of hysteria.

Now I have reached middle age, and, pausing for a very brief moment, I am in a position to judge that the content of my life is right on course for my dreams. In the future, I hope to be able to continue in the same direction, taking photographs, teaching photography, creating opportunities for young photographers to produce and show their work, and meeting people from all over the world who have similar desires and operate along similar lines. Of course, I would prefer all these things to be taking place in an environment of less competition, more muted ambitions and greater financial security. I think, therefore, that the statement of account so far is in credit, since all I lack is some improvement in the conditions in which I carry out my activities, without any change in their content. Perhaps from this point on my biography will be like all the happy life stories: there will only a few more words to adds.