Aliki Chapple

@commonmugwort

Literary translator, actor, early modern drama enthusiast. Luddite geek. Greek. Truth, justice, and the comics. Mostly in Athens. (@amaenad from Twitter but more chill) All photos licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 More on:

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Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· 27d

Tourism: Monastiraki. #Athens #UrbanPhotography

Colour photo of a pile of plastic bags full of raw potatoes cut into fries. The bags are clear and colourless and lying on their sides, the openings knotted. They are piled up in front of the wall of the church of the Virgin Mary Pantanassis in Monastiraki Square. It’s 9:30 AM and the souvlaki places are getting their morning delivery.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· 29d

Lines. #RuralPhotography

A colour photo of the shadow of a rough reed fence cast on a pale dirt road in the Cyclades.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jul 13

“best known for dodging velociraptors”

Sam Neill and Judy Davis in My Brilliant Career.

Same Neill in Dean Spanley, maybe my favourite of his roles.

Sam Neill and Julian Dennison in Hunt for the Wilderpeople.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jul 13

Halfway up the stairs. #Greece

Colour photo of a whitewashed house in the Cycladic islands, built up steps going up the side of the house, also whitewashed, the treads and risers an earthy yellow. There’s a window with a flat wooden shutter painted sage green to turquoise low down, the lintel also earthy yellow and barely above the steps.
White metal railings of vertical bars ornamented by curlicues and daisy-like rosettes.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jul 12

Sunlight (St. John’s Wort). #RuralPhotography

Colour photograph. Close-up on the small bright yellow flowers of St John’s Wort, growing wild in the Cyclades on their low, spiny tough bush,

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jul 11

Neos Kosmos. #DoorsOfAthens

A colour photo of a glass door with decorative metal grillework. The frame is painted dark green, and the glass is covered with a stylised petal pattern in white - two narrow side panels are filled with half rosettes, while the central panel has full flowers, four across.
This is a relatively common pattern and can be found across Athens - each petal is centres on a droplet shape with a spiral on either side, joined by a curved line.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jul 10

Angles. #Athens #UrbanPhotography

A colour photo of grey things. Several stacks of outdoor chairs, pale grey with curved backs and decorative cuts to imitate boards. They are photographed from above, the stacks back to back at an angle and everything is groups of parallel lines, even the watering in te grey marble pavement.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jul 9

Y’all may regret encouraging me. I have hundreds of photos, and there are dozens of styles, ranging from the very simple (an example from Neapoli) to the wildly elaborate (one in Plaka). #DoorsOfAthens

A glass shopfront, pale grey metal doors and windows with glass panes, a panel of horizontal bars across them, from about knee height to overhead. Colour photo.

A double glass door reflecting a sunlit building across the way. The black iron metalwork over the glass includes spirals, arcs, several different sized of lotus flowers , two shield-like emblems filled in by smaller spirals with something a bit like a doubled fuchsia bud in the centre. Colour photo.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jul 9

An unusual design from the Gouva neighbourhood. #DoorsOfAthens

Colour photo of a doorway with marble step and threshold. The main body of the metal door is painted faded green, almost sage, as is the diagonal handle. The glass panel is covered in white painted metal circles of varying sizes, the largest about as big as my palm, a bit like bubbles in froth.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jul 9

Summer. #Athens #UrbanPhotography

Colour photo of the mid century modern front door of an apartment building in central Athens. The door has big brass handles o a black-painted iron framework over glass. The left hand glass door is open, letting the wind through to cool the building. The right hand glass is closed and reflects the parked cars outside.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jul 8

Regimented. #Athens #UrbanPhotography

Colour photo of a window in an early 20th Century building. There are bars on the windows and pale blue wooden shutters inside. Unusually, a square
opening in the centre of the shutters has shutters hides an inner window. This presumably predates the bars, and might have been used to pass food or medicines or envelopes inside without entering the building, once part of a military hospital complex, so presumably the intent is to reduce the risk of infection.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jul 7

Hoop eternal. #Athens #UrbanPhotography

Colour photo. A rusted hoop, base embedded in a concrete block, sits against a wall. Behind it, two partly demolished wooden pallets, a plastic jar, terra-cotta coloured, a fraying rope. It looks almost like an abstract sculpture.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jul 6

Repaving. #Athens #UrbanPhotography

Colour photo of a several of wheelbarrows haphazardly propped up against a tree trunk, long handles pointing upwards. They are chained together at the widest point The dusty wheelbarrows, red and blue with black grips, in the tree’s shadow.

Bright in the sun behind them, a dusty street where they are replacing the pavement, bright orange netting rigged to protect the new surface, two apartment buildings in the 1960s mid century Athenian style.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jul 5

It’s hard to do this one justice because the street is narrow and the mural is long. Plus there’s that recessed doorway. #Athens #UrbanPhotography

Colour photo. This image focuses on the doorway of the building described above, the orange figure takes up all the rear wall and much of the floor, head bowed, wearing a pink dress with a yellow scarf around the shoulders, yellow desert and blue sky.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jul 5

Street Colour. #Athens #UrbanPhotography #StreetArt

Colour photo. An elaborate mural runs the length of the ground floor of an apartment building from the1960s or 70s. An acid yellow desert on which, in the curved doorway recess, an orange figure with long black hair is kneeling. The figure’s long arms stretch outside the recess holding two balloons on white strings, perhaps an offering to the pink figure in pink shorts sitting along the wall and across the boarded up window, a pink flower in hand, blue birds no perched on thighs. Between the two, a blue sky surrounding the blue plaque on which the architect of the building is named. I wonder what he would make of all this.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jul 4

Aiolou, June 20th. #CatsOfAthens #Caturday #Cat

Right in the middle of the tourist district on a quiet midsummer evening a sooty grey adolescent kitten with white paws, belly, chest and muzzle, alert and friendly, on haunches, trying to nose out if I have food. I did not. Colour photo.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jul 3

The B of the Bang. #Athens #UrbanPhotography

Colour photo of the shadow of a Yucca cast on the pavement, like an explosion of spikes. Somesofter rounder leaves accompanying, maybe from a mulberry tree.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jul 2

Athens by night: a porch. #Athens #UrbanPhotography #NightPhotography

Colour photo taken at night. An inhabited front porch, almost like a cluttered little living room. Varnished wooden chair, side table with tablecloth and a vase of flowers, numerous icons and family photos on the house wall behind the chair, and through the window colours fairy lights. A Greek flag. Other items, harder to discern. A washing line in the foreground. When I walked past this place in daylight, there was a woman in the chair and people visiting with her; I’d guess she’s lived there a long time.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jul 1

Old Athens: Vyronas #Athens #UrbanPhotography

Colour photo of a pale umber tan coloured house, probably from the early 20th Century. The area was practically rural then. It’s on a street corner, with a tall shuttered balcony door and a little curved balcony right on the corner. A flat roof with ornamental crenellations tops the one and a half storey building - half basements often housed kitchens and pantries and, laundry room, servant quarters. Above the flat roof, a sunlit later structure serves to shade those using the roof as an outdoor space.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jun 30

Bus stop. #Athens #UrbanPhotography #NightPhotography

Colour photo. Walking home through Vyronas late the other night, I photographed this bus stop. I’ve passed by in daylight but there were always lots of people.

Imagine a grocery store in a Greek village, maybe even closed, and adjoining it a little house with a mulberry tree in front. Couple chairs outside so the old folk can people watch, mismatched. House and tree are whitewashed. There’s a blue painted wooden bench facing the house convivially, an arrangement that looks like it’s existed for 50 years or more.
And then the municipality added a tal bye pole with a bus stop sign, and another one with bright orange electronic lettering announcing arriving buses. Surreal.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jun 29

Green and yellow. #Athens #UrbanPhotography

Colour photo of tall stools with woven straw seats, stored two or three deep, with small tall square tables upturned above them, in overnight storage.

It’s a café bar in a stoa, a commercial arcade in central Athens. The narrow façade is green and teal, the stools and tables too, and black, and yellow. The teal shutters are just opening, and a man’s face partially in view through them. It’s noon, and he’s setting up for the day.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jun 28

And now I’m at the Theatro Vrachon (Synodinou, the smaller wooden one) for Iphigenia at Aulis.

Colour photo of quarry walls, trees at the base. On the grey concrete below, a greyer X marks the spot, held down by rocks. A circle of little white and red flags surround it, and a black wedge, also held down by rocks, points towards the crux. The evening light is fading and I’m on the wooden seats of an amphitheatre in Vyronas.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jun 28

Έρχεται Βαλκάνια….

Weather forecast showing Tuesda June 30th hitting 36 C in Athens.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jun 28

Summer gold. #Athens #UrbanPhotography

Colour photo taken in the vegetable market. Divided by a low wooden barrier between two sections of a vegetable barrow, a bright orange array of apricots on the right, blushed with red. On the left,paler but equally bright, the massive, deeply ridged oblongs of Argos melons, an heirloom variety with a long history in Greece.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jun 27

Να, δείτε. Είναι και @atsoumpeli στο ινστα.

Σαν κόμικς, αλά λίγο έξω από το πλαίσιο, η ιστορία ενός σκύλου κα την συνάντηση και φιλία με ένα φίδι. Print. Μαύρο σε χαρτί.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jun 27

Άμα πάτε Καλλιδρομίου σήμερα, δείτε τα έργα της Λύδιας, που τα πουλάει δίπλα στα λαχανικά. Εχει ταλέντο η κοπέλα.

Μαυρόασπρα prints. Δύο γυμνές, ένα με κάτι σαν ιερογλυφικά, μια ιστορία με σκύλο και φίδι λίγο κόμικς, κάτι αυτοκόλλητα.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jun 27

Today’s kitten looks down on you from above. Not aloof, as would only be your due, but in bafflement, as is also appropriate. #CatsOfAthens #Caturday #cat

Perched on a gatepost on a hill, a kitten in a colour photo. She’s sitting on her hindquarters, tail wrapped around paws, yellow and grey tabby stripes muddled all over her back and toes, white belly and nose. Green eyes seem to say “but what it is doing?” It is pointing a phone camera up at her.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jun 26

The owl and the diver. by @ARTmihus #Athens #UrbanPhotography #StreetArt

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jun 25

Leaf shadow. #Athens #UrbanPhotography

Colour photo of a pavement in the dappled shadow of a tall shrub with smallish oval leaves. A small scatter of yellowed leaves lies in the shade of their siblings above, a variable organic pattern of shadow, darker shadow, light, brighter light.

Aliki Chapple@commonmugwort· Jun 24

Brown study. #Athens #UrbanPhotography