Niko J. Kallianiotis

This new monograph from Niko J. Kallianiotis (born 1973) presents photos taken in and around Athens, the city in which he grew up. The images reflect the artist’s eagerness to assimilate back into a home that feels at once foreign and familiar.

America in a Trance, the first monograph from Pennsylvania-based Greek photographer Niko J. Kallianiotis (born 1973), dives into the heart and soul of the Pennsylvania industrial regions, where small-town values still exist and small businesses once thrived under the sheltered wings of American industry. It was to this cradle of American industrialism that immigrants from Europe once crossed the Atlantic, in hopes of a better future. Some, like Kallianiotis, who has called this place home for about 20 years, still do. Those decades have taught him how beliefs from both sides of the fence in the current political climate have a direct effect in these towns. And yet Kallianiotis achieves a certain level of neutrality within the work, whether portraying Pennsylvania coal towns to the east, the shadows of looming steel stacks to the West, or every faded American dream in between.