The duality of my life’s trajectory makes my visual identity a fluid one. My formative years were spent in Greece, but for all of my adulthood I’ve lived in the United States. Because of my hybrid background I view the world and my surrounding environs from two different perspectives, both culturally and socially. This circumstance has heightened my sensibilities and created an uncertain identity crisis. My cultural and social values have been challenged; feelings of alienations instigated the desire to attempt and recapture and reevaluate my identity. Expatriation was not a personal decision, but my current photographic language is. With my visual language I am attempting to comment on my cultural dichotomy; the decision of use of color, light, and form in my work is of ultimate importance and plays a significant role in representing myself. Like our daily life experiences and moods, those entities are a fluctuating variable that is represented on a two-dimensional surface.
Niko J. Kallianiotis is a photographer and educator based in Pennsylvania. Originally from Greece, he started his career as a newspaper photographer, first as a freelancer at The Times Leader, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and then as a staff photographer at The Coshocton Tribune in Coshocton, Ohio, and The Watertown Daily Times in Watertown, New York. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Photography at Marywood University in Scranton, PA and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He is also a contributing photographer for The New York Times.