Over the past three years or so, and after gaining the trust of religious groups around Athens, Greek photographer Tassos Vrettos has been allowed to visit no less than 44 of these places of worship of Christians, Hindus, Muslims and others, and document the rites, prayers and other events that take place there. The result of this long and meticulous fieldwork is the Wor(th)ship series, which is currently on show at the Pireos Str. Annexe of the Benaki Museum in Athens and has been published as a 384-page exhibition catalogue. A seasoned art- and fashion-photographer, Vrettos is known for a detached point of view and a painterly, often twisted approach to realistic scenes and subject matter —something that, in fact, the Wor(th)ship series seems to move away from. Here, Vrettos focuses again on the human body but always in relation to the social bonds between the members of the group it belongs —whether it be young self-flagellating Muslim men or flower garland-weaving Sikh women. At the rare cases where Vrettos captures a body in solitude, it is again in relation to something else, namely the individual’s quest for spiritual enlightenment, sense of belonging and religious fulfilment. 

Peaceful, moving and full of empathy, these images are a real eye-opener for most Athenians, who are often oblivious of the sheer amount of different cultures and social groups that have made their city their home. At a time where immigrants and refugees can easily become the scapegoat of pressing issues shaking the country at its very core, Vrettos’s photography inverts the foreigner’s stigma and exposes these impromptu religious sites for what they are: respectful and sacred, not because of their relation to deities of any kind, but rather as places where identity, community and tradition are celebrated and the human spirit is elevated above the hardships of displacement and exclusion.