Paniyiri Greek Festival 2011
greek festivalpaniyirievent photographybrisbanesouth brisbane

Paniyiri Greek Festival 2011

Chris Harvey
The queue at the ticket booth is the beginning of the story. Everyone is still outside, still in their ordinary life. In ten minutes that will change.

01 / 05

The grill at a Greek festival is not a food stall — it is the centre of gravity. Everyone orbits it sooner or later.

02 / 05

A sideshow alley at midnight has its own peculiar light. The rifles in a row, the stuffed animals, the operator half-awake — there is a photograph in all of it.

03 / 05

When you photograph a crowd of identical objects, you are photographing repetition, and repetition at the right focal length becomes something else entirely.

04 / 05

Festival crowds after dark are full of people who have given themselves permission to be somewhere other than where they usually are. That permission shows on their faces.

05 / 05

From the Author

The Paniyiri festival happens every year in Musgrave Park, and every year it pulls the same trick on me: I arrive expecting to work and end up just being somewhere that feels good to be. The food smells hit you before you get through the gate. The music follows.

I have been photographing Paniyiri across several years now, and what strikes me each time is how little it changes. The same extended families setting up tables, the same arguments about whether to queue for souvlaki or go straight to the baklava, the same toddlers waddling around in the grass while their parents watch the dancing. Events like this are a record of a culture choosing to keep itself alive, year after year, in public.

On food photography: I am not primarily a food photographer but the grill at Paniyiri is impossible to ignore. Men working over a long flat barbecue in the dark, smoke rising into the park lights — that is not a culinary image. It is a labour image, a patience image. I moved in close and worked with the available light, letting the smoke do what smoke does in a frame.

On sideshow alley: The rides and game stalls that ring the main event are a world within a world. A row of rifles waiting for someone to pick them up, the stuffed animals piled behind — this is Brisbane carnival culture from the 1950s, somehow still running. I photographed it at an angle that emphasised the repetition, and the result is more graphic than documentary.

On the dancing: The best moment of any Paniyiri evening is when the formal performance breaks down and people start joining the circle on the grass. That transition — from watching to doing — happens fast, and you have to be watching for it. I was.

On people at night: Night festival photography rewards patience. You cannot force good portraits in that light — you wait for people to stand somewhere that the ambient sources find them, then you work fast. The two friends I photographed near the stalls had no idea I was pointing a camera at them. They were in their own world completely. That is the image.

Chris Harvey