The mechanical origins of photography are always apparent through some error, as for instance when we photograph a building turning the lens upwards. In this case, the inward slope of the building ’ sides is usually attributed to some fault of the lens whereas in fact it is due to misusing the lens. There is no reason why a lens should record correctly when its optical axis is horizontal and incorrectly when it is titled. Stelios Efstathopoulos’ images are full of such “mistakes”. Their continuous repetition tells us they are not accidental but rather a conscious deviation from the system in which the photographic image is so often trapped. In some of this pictures, the result of this mechanised imaging is a revelation for the meaning of this liberation of the image. The faces in the foreground are enormous, almost on the lens itself, stuck on ourselves and at the same time loosing their importance through being unfocused. Obviously “this” is not what Efstathopoulos wants to show. Another part of the image, correctly focused, sends our eye to the background, to what seems to be a detail, a pair of eyes in a mirror, a seated old woman, a fallen doll, a dog. The background events do not seem to be ignorant to the fact that the photographer ’s eye is not looking at them. The lens’ field of view goes around them and behind them reconding, in reverse, a view of space. Here the “error” becomes a comment on photography. The meaning of the scene photographed remains suspended. The mechanical vision, freed from the rationality of conventional use, imposes a new reading of the image, widening our perception both for what we see in the world around us and for what we understand. text by Costis Antoniadis