Eikonostasia

Abstract

Abstract ‘Eikonostasia’ is the Greek word for roadside shrines indicating death in car accidents. In this article, the evidence of these shrines in modern material culture throughout Crete is being presented. Furthermore, the author/photographer explores these particular and unique structures as well as the preservation of memory through tangible evidence of an event which has occurred on a precise moment in time. How do the images of these particular structures carry through time the ‘Barthian’, ‘punctum’ and ‘studium’? To what point photography can actually record an evolution of a social habit/tradition/tendency throughout the advancement of our civilization and turn it into evidence of a highly evolving present? How does photography, as an art, revive the original character of these structures, which have gone from public to private in the spare of 50 years?