Stranger than Paradise

A wild mountainous area. The locals living their own community rules according to nature. We, escaping the alienation of the city. A unifying feeling rooted in the deepest layers of human existence, we are drawn to each other until "strangeness" separates

STRANGER THAN PARADISE

A rough mountain region in Greece. The locals, living with their own rules of community, surviving with nature (non-human), some of them never having left, some returning from the alienated life of the cities. And we, with our roots in the life of the countryside, from which we are both trying to escape and to hold on to its values. Dis-rooted and seeking a return to our future, we walk a tightrope between the nonsense and the meaningless. The movement in transformations and in gazes, the non-humans, the secrets of the mountain landscape itself, the hard work, the tenderness, the relationship between men and the play between "boys & girls", create new languages with apt words and clear confinements. Integrating the in-between, the unknown, the fear, the wisdom of experience, the learning, the search for security of the small community - albeit temporary. It is a uniting emotion rooted in the deepest layers of the human being that pulls us towards each other until our "strangeness" separates us. A breath in the struggle for freedom.

Background information

The Agrafa Mountains are the southern part of the Pindus Mountain range in Western Greece. Its geography contains several peaks over 2000m altitude, and deep gorges scattering the landscape. Villages in this region could be reached only by foot and with animals for carrying heavy loads. The name means "Un-written", because during Ottoman Occupation over 400 years those villages weren't "written". Even today some of them are reachable only over dirt-roads. The real life of the small amount of families still living in the area hasn't drastically changed over the last century, except of electricity, συγκινωνία and communication. because of Landflucht, schools and other public institutions are closing and rarely spread, m;any people evakuate to the nearer towns and cities or to the capital Athens.

This photo work emerged out of several travels to the region of Agrafa and in particular to its western part that is bordered by the Acheloos river. All these travels had a goal of meeting with friends which either live permanently there or with strong bounds to their places of origin while living in Athens or other cities. As someone who grew up in a village with bauern working in very traditional means the way of thinking and being in this world of the locals was familiar to me, but the fact that we didn't grew up side by side made me and others "strangers". These fruitable tensions, this constallation full of energy and encounters is what intrigates me and is the theme of my work