Pavlos Kozalidis

Meet This Photographer

Bill Shapiro

Review in the author’s 'Meet This Photographer' section on Instagram on Fridays from Former Editor-in-Chief of LIFE magazine; Contrib. Editor, Leica Conversations;
Columnist Bill Shapiro.

It’s Friday so let’s Meet This Photographer: Pavlos Kozalidis (@pavloskozalidis). I’m not sure I’ve met a photographer as dedicated to —and single-mindedly focused on—his craft as Pavlos. When I reached him recently he told me the following: Over the 40-plus years he’s been a photographer, he’s visited more than 90 countries; has taken more than 700,000 photographs; didn’t pursue an opportunity with Magnum because he was happy doing what he was doing; lives on a budget of $15/day, sleeping in an 8-room dormitory and often eating one meal a day to save money for…film. Pavlos is 63.

That dedication? It shows. Good lord, it shows. I mean, look at these frames. I find them, well, extraordinary. Classic. Cinematic. Sweeping in their ability to capture space and emotion and, at times, the beauty and the frailty of our very existence. To me, they look like great music sounds—everything in its place but in a way that surprises you.

Pavlos, who is based in Athens, says the life of an itinerant photographer “is a real challenge. But comfort makes you bored. It destroys you. I’d rather struggle up the hill so that at least I know I’m going the right way.” He also told me he’s “an overthinker,” and that “Photography helps me quiet my mind. It’s like a visual mediation.”

What’s he been trying capture over all of these years, in all of these countries? “Life. Human poetry. Beauty. Sometimes beauty doesn’t exist,” he told me. “Sometimes it exists in places you don’t think you’d find it. That’s what I’m looking for.”

I do believe he’s found it.

For the Camera Curious: “I don’t care about the technical stuff. I don’t care about the dinner plate; I care about what I put on the plate. As long as it tastes good, I could be eating on a fucking banana leaf.” His “workhorse for the last 20 years” is the Canon EOS 1V; he also uses a Leica M6, and “a cheap Russian Horizon camera.”