Mr. Christos' shop. It's a small foundry where he does mainly custom bronze casting. It's in Votanikos --just a quarter of an hour from the center of Athens, Greece, but the whole area seems more like a bombarded village rather than an industrial area of a metropolis.

He has been doing bronze casting for more than 30 years, and I shot his shop just one week before he closed --already having applied for retirement. The big "10" is his street number: Ploutonos 10.

The smoked door, quite like an entrance to hell. This is thirty years of furnace fire, ashes, sand, dirt, and all kinds of residue.

The shop shut down just a few days ago, and Mr. Christos is trying to sell anything of value. This is the oil tank for the furnace. This is not an abandoned shop however. This is more or less how it looked even when it was producing at full capacity.

His name and phone number, handwritten on a piece of cardboard outside the door. This was the one and only sign of the shop. This, and the big "10" (the street number) painted on the outside wall. There are no street signs there.

I learned about Mr. Christos from a customer of mine, who does bronze fine art as a hobby. I learned that there is only a handful of such shops in Athens. Completely un-industrialized custom casting for artists. A dying craft they say...

Stacks of mold frames, to be sold. He insisted that he wouldn't sell them for scrap metal. He would sell them only if they were to be used again for casting.

Forgotten corners. The dust of 20, or maybe 30 years.

The main tools of the trade. Old tools. Craftsmanship is far more important in this kind of work. Decades go by; method remains the same.

This workbench has seen tons of art...

Forgotten pieces, a forgotten calendar from the 80s. It's quite hard to believe that this was a working shop up until 2014.

That's the shop. Three rooms, less than a hundred sqm all and all. Just enough for one or two men.

The drill. Almost poetic in my eyes. Just another tool for Mr. Christos.

Mr. Christos is an uneducated worker. But nothing like it! Working and talking with countless artists over the years have transformed him. He was suprisingly kind and calm, and with an excellent taste for art. Actually I was wrong. He's an artist himself; not a worker.

 

Mr. Christos ran out of luck just one month before closing shop forever. Two weeks ago he lost his left eye from a flying 8-pound piece of metal. He is incredibly cool about it; almost happy. "Thank god it hit me in the eye, and not on the head" he said.