“I love human beings. I love art. I love photography. So portrait photography is my field because it includes each one of them,” says Alexia Moraitou, a photographer from Greece.
Her work gained international recognition and was exhibited in Greece, Milan, and Venice, with a feature in a publication with the 100 artists of 2025.
Moraitou’s portraits are equally somber and life-affirming, perfectly depicting the statement from her bio: “We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen…” They are like an unsettling bet placed with a viewer against neat and borderline surgical precision with which a modern person likes to view and show themselves to others.
The artist commands us to look at what we are instead of what we wish to be. She doesn’t shy away from nudity without falling into utilizing it for shock value. It may be visceral, but it is treated with cold objectivity—as a source of beauty and humanity. The distinctive style of her portfolio invites viewers to confront preconceptions about limits of self-expression, eroticism, and artistic depiction of the soul.
Moraitou aims to create her own mythology, one where gods have disappeared and been replaced by their mortal progeny. Through complex setups and a highly imaginative world that seems difficult to replicate, the photographer tells stories that could easily exist as standalone pieces or as parts of a grander narrative.
Her art functions as a continuous thread of storytelling; each capture is primarily its own tale, yet it seamlessly contributes to a greater whole. The viewers are invited to witness the origin story of each of these fallen demigods. Through distinct imagery inspired by dry-plate photography, Moraitou combines portraiture, close-ups, nudity, and pagan, organic elements to recreate an atmospheric, sepia-filtered alternate reality where all her characters get their spotlight. “Because everyone is special,” the artist explains.
Read our “Roots” issue in full
The new theme, born as usual from what the submitted works held in common, is “ROOTS.” Within its pages, we present the artworks, creativity, and inspiration of 60 visual artists and writers from 21 countries around the world. Their diverse voices come together around a shared exploration of the return to where one belongs, the invisible threads of tradition that shape identity, and the ongoing reconnection with nature, others, and oneself.
We’re a team of writers using our craft to spotlight art in its most honest form. RAWGUE. started as a bi-monthly editorial experiment where each issue’s theme is dictated by the submitted work, thus removing editorial bias from the equation and preserving a more raw approach. We focus on all forms of poetry: written, photographed, painted, drawn, and filmed.
