Yorgos Lanthimos: Photographs

You walk into a structure built to resemble a Greek temple, and the photographs on the walls do not explain themselves. A figure on a film set in New Orleans holds a pose that could be direction or exhaustion. A cracked wall on an Aegean island offers no context beyond its own texture. The frames are hung at a height that forces you to stand close, and the room is quiet enough to hear the person next to you breathing.

Yorgos Lanthimos: Photographs is the first exhibition in Greece dedicated to the photographic work of the Oscar-nominated director of Poor Things, The Favourite, and The Lobster. Curated by Michael Mack, the exhibition brings together 182 photographs from four bodies of work spanning five years. Three series document life on and around film sets in New Orleans, Atlanta, and Budapest — material shot during the production of Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness, and Bugonia. The fourth, previously unseen, was shot during solitary walks in Athens and on Aegean islands: quieter images focused on the everyday and the seemingly insignificant. The exhibition coincides with Lanthimos's photo book viscin (2026). The architectural design, shaped like a classical Greek temple, places 110 new works in a central altar-like space, with the three film-connected series around the outer perimeter.

The crowd divides into two camps: cinephiles who know Lanthimos's filmography frame by frame and want to see how his eye operates in still photography, and the contemporary art audience that follows Onassis Stegi's programming. You will recognize the film people by how long they linger at the set photographs, trying to identify which scene was being shot. The art crowd moves differently — reading composition, not looking for Easter eggs.

| Aspect | Details | |--------|---------| | **Setting** | Onassis Stegi, Syngrou Avenue — 18,000 sq m cultural center, exhibition spaces across multiple floors | | **Vibe** | Contemplative, cinematic, architecturally deliberate — the exhibition design shapes the viewing experience | | **Format** | Photography exhibition, 182 works across four series, temple-shaped installation | | **Access** | Ticketed, timed entry |

The exhibition asks you to reconcile two versions of the same artist. The film-set photographs carry the controlled chaos of production — extras in costume, equipment at the edges of the frame, the tension between the constructed world and the world around it. The Greek series strips all of that away: no actors, no sets, no narrative apparatus. What remains is Lanthimos alone with a camera, finding images on the same unsettling register as his films but without any of the machinery. The juxtaposition is the argument — the director's eye does not depend on the director's apparatus.

If you are coming for behind-the-scenes film content or wall text that decodes each image, this operates more like a gallery show than a film retrospective — the photographs stand without context. But if you want to see how one of contemporary cinema's most distinctive visual minds translates to still images, inside a purpose-built architectural installation, this is the exhibition.

Onassis Stegi is on Syngrou Avenue. The nearest metro is Syngrou Fix, a thirteen-minute walk south along Syngrou. The exhibition runs from March 7 through May 17, 2026. Hours are Thursday through Saturday 18:00 to 23:30, and Sunday 13:00 to 20:00. Tickets are €10 regular, €8 reduced, €5 for disabled visitors — available through the Onassis Stegi website.

One hundred eighty-two photographs, two months, and then the temple comes down. Lanthimos makes films that leave the room with you — these photographs operate on the same terms.