Lanthimos Opens Athens Photo Exhibition, Pauses Filmmaking
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- Yorgos Lanthimos opened a photography exhibition titled "Yorgos Lanthimos: Photographs" at Onassis Stegi in Athens, running until 17 May, with his images displayed inside a white-columned temple-like structure
- The show features a new Greece series called "No Word for Blue," including a coffin beside a mop, headless horses obscured by trees, and a roadside memorial under a danger sign that Lanthimos calls "dark, nuanced" and capable of shifting meaning day to day
- Lanthimos is also releasing a book titled Viscin, available for pre-order via Mack, which gathers images taken during and around last year's Bugonia production
- After making three films back to back — Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness, and Bugonia — Lanthimos says he is stepping back from cinema, unsure whether the break will last weeks or years, and won't make another film until he feels the urge
- Emma Stone, who has appeared in all of Lanthimos's films since 2018's The Favourite, joined him each night after filming to process negatives in a makeshift hotel bathroom darkroom — a ritual Lanthimos describes as "meditative"
- Lanthimos describes himself as "painfully shy" and says he struggles to approach strangers to photograph them, a striking contrast with a filmmaker whose work tackles incest, self-mutilation, and child sacrifice
- The director picked up a camera at 19 after quitting a promising basketball career (his father played for the Greek national team) and started making films that became part of Greece's celebrated "weird wave" before he relocated to London and later returned home after Brexit
Why it matters: Lanthimos, an Oscar-nominated director whose recent trilogy of films (Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness, Bugonia) starred Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, and Willem Dafoe, is publicly pausing his film career indefinitely. The Athens exhibition at Onassis Stegi, running through 17 May, marks his first major institutional showcase of personal photography untethered to a specific film promotion.
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