Abstract

In this photoessay the reader/viewer is invited to an alternative tour of the Athenian Acropolis. It moves beyond the monumentalization and sacralization of the classical to expose neglected or suppressed materialities, and it shows how these materialities, through their sensorial properties, have the power to persist, enacting multiple times simultaneously. They thus offer us alternative ways of conceptualizing temporality, beyond the modernist tropes of linearity and succession. At the same time, this essay is a plea for archaeologists and other material culture specialists to engage with the photographic medium in creative ways, beyond its use as documentation. The photographic process is not deployed here as a representational device but as an embodied, evocative practice which can enable a multi-sensory and kinaesthetic engagement with materiality and temporality.