Margarita Mavromichalis
Always fascinated by the human behavior, she seeks the human presence in her frames more than anything else. This led her to explore portraiture, street and documentary photography in her early studies at the International Center of Photography in New York.
A world traveler and adventure seeker, she visits every year countries that will broaden her horizons and bring her closer to communities that she would otherwise not discover. Through her lens she likes to tell their stories, and those stories are often humbling and grounding.
Margarita Mavromichalis is a Greek photographer who has spent many years of her life living abroad and speaks five languages. She sees photography as another language and argues that it could be her second language as it is one that is universal, understood by all and conveys the most powerful messages.
Margarita is also passionate about documenting current events that she feels strongly about, highlighting their social impact. This led her to cover the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy that hit New York in 2012. Some of her images are part of the permanent collection of The Museum of The City of New York and The Brooklyn Historical Society; she was also published in the Wall Street Journal. Back in Greece, she devoted most of her time documenting the refugee crisis as it developed on the island of Lesvos from 2014 to 2018. She was nominated for the Prix Pictet 2019 and her work was exhibited in New York and London and published in the Huffington Post.
Unable to produce her usual work during the Covid-19 lockdown period, mostly spent in London, she decided to turn the camera on to herself, creating a series of self portraits titled “As Time Stood Still” that explore her forever changing feelings and emotions, her fears and insecurities, her anger and hopes, often using humor and sarcasm that she feels are very important ingredients in her work and in life in general.
Margarita strongly believes and hopes that 2020 and 2021 should give many people the opportunity to think out of the box, to reevaluate priorities, values, relationships and policies.
She was awarded the International Pollux Award in 2016, the Julia Cameron Award in 2018 and 2020 and was a finalist in the Miami Street Photography Festival in 2018 and 2020. “As Time Stood Still” was awarded winner runner-up in the Fine Art category by the Worldwide Photography Awards in their Lockdown competition and was a finalist at the Paris Photo Festival 2020. Her work has been exhibited in New York, Boston, London, Paris, Barcelona, Athens, Berlin and Budapest.
Margarita’s work shows that, no matter the circumstances, there is always a way to be creative and to turn a negative or difficult situation into something positive. She inspires us to never give up!
Margarita Mavromichalis is a Photographer
