STILL HERE - Portraits of/in a Blue City

Still Here is a documentary photographic work that approaches the urban landscape of the city of Kavala through a dual form of documentation: spaces and portraits, both functioning as positions of observation of the city.

The project explores how urban space shapes and reflects the collective experience and identity of its inhabitants during a period of prolonged social and economic crisis.

Drawing on Maurice Halbwachs’ theory of collective memory, the project approaches the city as a lived archive, in which memory inhabits space not as a static imprint, but as an active presence that persists and transforms through everyday life.

Kavala, a coastal city in northern Greece, has historically functioned as a place of transition and reception. From the refugee influx of 1923 to the contemporary migration crisis, it carries a lasting identity as a place of refuge. Today, the city is being reshaped through the language of place branding and the tourism economy, reflecting a broader global shift in urban development strategies, especially evident in countries like Greece, where tourism increasingly functions as a primary mechanism of economic recovery. The narrative of the “blue city” constructs a unified, idealized image, in which landscape, sea, and cultural heritage are transformed into marketable assets. Urban space is increasingly treated as an investment field, with the rise of tourism operating as a vehicle for real estate development, restructuring housing, neighborhoods, and the everyday life of residents. At the same time, in the already environmentally burdened gulf of Kavala, shaped by heavy industry, projects of European prestige are being introduced under the mantle of “green development,” despite their questionable environmental consequences.

Beyond this communicative surface, the city continues to bear the imprint of history and collective experience: its refugee and industrial past, the contradictions and memories that constitute it. Within this ongoing transformation, the city appears to veil itself in its blue narrative, overlooking its inherited past and its precarious future.

Still Here turns its gaze toward the city behind its image, as an act of memory and observation. It seeks to construct a space of retrieval, attentive to gaps, discontinuities, or even zones of invisibility. It also traces the ties that bind us to a place, entrap us, or sometimes make us complacent, leaving small illusory crevices of optimism and hope.