Block 15, 2026

Transitions

With the photographic essay “Block 15,” the trilogy “Korai 4 –
Kaisariani Shooting Range – Block 15” comes to completion — a journey into
the deepest darkness of memory, where History does not merely narrate,
but insists, and where Resistance does not fall silent — it haunts.

This is not a series of photographs; it is a ritual of retrieval, a violent unveiling
of the invisible, a confrontation with what never faded: the traces that persist
on walls, in voids, in the very light itself.

The Karaiskakis Camp A in Haidari, the largest concentration camp in occupied Greece,
remains to this day among the least known in Europe. A place that did not remain
in memory as it should have — yet never ceased to weigh upon it.
During the German occupation, it was transformed into a mechanism
of repression and retaliation.

Initially, it operated for only a few days under Italian control; on September 10, 1943,
it passed into German hands, under the supervision of the SD (Sicherheitsdienst),
the SS Security Service.
In its early days, it functioned as an annex of the Averof Prison on Alexandras Avenue
— an extension of confinement, before becoming something more:
an intermediate space, a threshold.

The camp covered approximately 500 stremmas and included twenty block-buildings —
barracks, auxiliary spaces, and structures of various uses. It was inaugurated
on September 3, 1943, with the transfer of prisoners from Larisa. From that moment on,
the space began to fill — not only with people, but with anticipation, fear,
and that silence which precedes.

The transitions described here are not places. They are not roads, walls, courtyards,
or stones. They are something that leaves you each time you move from one space to
another — something lost forever, without return. The “after” loses its meaning;
it becomes a void, a phantom, a weight that never lifts: a trace that burdens,
an absence that does not fade.

In these spaces, transitions were never neutral. They were final ruptures:
from life to death, from breath to absolute silence, from presence to violent,
irreversible disappearance. And each passage left behind not merely silence, but a cry
that was never heard — and for that reason, never ceased to echo.

Block 15 was the very locus of this transition. The place where time narrowed.
A space of isolation and torture for those who were to be led before the firing squad
the following day.

From there, at dawn on May Day, the “200” set out for Kaisariani —
a passage with no return, a march that indelibly inscribed their mark on
the history of the Resistance.

After the Second World War, the building was painted over again and again.
Along with the walls, the traces were erased: the prisoners’ notes, the carved words,
the final testimonies. Yet nothing is ever entirely lost; something persists,
even beneath the layers of oblivion.

Today, through efforts of remembrance and re-emergence, Block 15 returns —
not as a representation, but as a presence. A place that does not merely narrate,
but insists. A silent yet immovable witness to human dignity in the face of violence.