Artist Statement
I am interested in the details of working lives and the ambience of places where rural people labor and celebrate religious rituals: the 6 a.m. morning milking; dancers celebrating the summer Panagiri (feast days); Persogianni village against a backdrop of soaring mountains.
I began “Daily Bread”, my most recent portfolio in 2006; it is the culmination of many road trips photographing in rural Greece. I shoot with film and a medium-format camera and print my own gelatin silver prints. I like to think that the simplicity and directness of my method reflects the lives my camera bears witness to.
Traditions, rituals, and the work that holds people together--what does this look like in the 21st century?
I shied away from the well-documented monuments and chose instead places where the soul of Greece spoke to me: farmers in Epirus near the Albanian border still milking by hand but using cell phones and 4x4 trucks to make the job easier; young farmers running the family farm breaking the global trend of migration from farm to city; villagers joined in communal rituals and feast days eating, drinking, dancing.
The people I photograph have touched me deeply, however, I have tried to present them in a modern context free of nostalgia. Through exposure and printing techniques, I wish to emphasize the beauty of their movements, the dignity of their work, the magic of the natural world around them.