Moving Line

European city centres in transition. A photographic research notebook.

Sometimes a few metres are enough to be in another city.

Valletta or Thessaloniki (photo to be added)

The project

Moving Line is an authored photographic work on European city centres in transition. Each city forms one chapter.

People are at the centre of the project. They are not symbols. A jeweller, a seamstress, a fishmonger, a young entrepreneur: each reveals a way of inhabiting the city centre, and it is through them that the transformation becomes legible. Streets, shopfronts and façades are not the subject. They form the active backdrop where the change shows.

Photography comes after the encounter. I walk, I observe, I enter, I exchange. I choose a frame, a distance, a light. The image is built from what is real, without staging the situation.

This work takes a position, that of the gaze. It chooses what deserves attention. It never says things were better before, nor that they are necessarily better now.

The chapters

Valletta, 2025 · Genesis of the project

Fifty-five hectares. Several ways of inhabiting the same city.

Valletta is the first field of this research, carried out in 2025. In a capital that fits within fifty-five hectares, several ways of inhabiting the city centre overlap: those who live and work there, those who pass through. This is where the method, the distance and the project's central question took shape.

A few encounters from the notebook:

The owner of the Bikini Shop, 85 years old, in the shop founded by his father.
Joe, jeweller, St Elmo's Fire Jewellery, in his store.
A dgħajsa ferryman on the Grand Harbour, whose small boat connects Valletta to the Three Cities.
The Bajada twins, Francis Bajada house since 1925, Merchants Street.
"Are you taking our photo? Do you know I'm Sophia Loren?" Cacciattolo's Bar, St Mark Street.
Marthom Shoe Repair, a shoe repair workshop on Old Bakery Street.
A barber in his shop mirror, waiting for customers.
Joseph Attard, St Francis Cafeteria.

Thessaloniki, 2026 · Second chapter

Sometimes a few metres are enough to be in another city.

The heart of Thessaloniki concentrates, within a few hundred metres, everything the project looks for: covered markets still active, workshops, shops present for several generations, and, all around, a city renovating, attracting, transforming. The Kapani market, still popular, sits beside new buildings and renovated façades.

A few encounters from the notebook:

Reza, an architect by training, shapes bespoke wooden pens in his workshop-boutique Arteavita, from 50 to 2,000 euros a piece, sold from Thessaloniki to just about everywhere in the world.
"I took over my father's three shops. I don't want my children to take them over. Today, it's too hard."
Η Πηγή του Φύλλου, "The source of phyllo," a handmade phyllo pastry workshop running since 1995, at the Kapani market.
Christina Pavlidou runs the household linen shop founded by her grandfather, whose photograph hangs in the background.
Two seamstresses still keep shop at the Bezesteni, a late-15th-century Ottoman covered market, one of the few still in operation in Greece.
An olive and olive oil merchant.
Ionis, in his Symeonidis shop backing onto the covered Bezesteni market. The business, specialising in artificial flowers and plants, has existed for 75 years.
This young woman runs a second-hand shop. Her aim: to give freely to those who need it.

The next step will add sound: binaural recordings captured in the places photographed, to let the image be heard as well as seen.

Where the project stands

Two research notebooks have been published to date, Valletta (2025) and Thessaloniki (2026). These are personal, self-funded works that lay out the method and the gaze.

The definitive format, an exhibition and a printed edition, city by city, is in discussion with several European cities, and in search of funding.

Interested in the project? Is the transformation of city centres a subject that speaks to you? I'd be glad to talk.

Get in touch