Beatrice Hamblett Photography

The Dot on the Map (July 2009)

A dot on the map, a decision to go. Then many worlds unfold.

I remember the summer of 2005 when a friend in Skopelos spoke lovingly of his mountain village in Epirus. Later, another friend mentioned a wedding with musicians from Epirus. Epirus seemed to be synonymous with authenticity, mountain villages made of stone, magical music, a place untouched by tourism. Takis Tloupas, my favorite photographer, his amazing photos of Greece in the 50‘s, 60‘s also planted a seed. Authenticity…By the next summer, I was planning a trip to Persogianni, my friend’s village in Epirus. I had just finished a large body of work on vernacular architecture in Greece, and I was ready for new photographic adventures.

There it was, Persogianni, a dot on my map north of the western city of Ioannina, circled and waiting to be discovered. I rented a car in Volos, the nearest town on the mainland from Skopelos, my base, and set out on June 8, 2006. The cross-country trip was mostly single-carriage roads, the Egnatia Othos (superhighway) was 3 years from completion. West of Trikala, the road climbed, winding through mountain passes all the way to Ioannina. Dizzy from switch-backs, steep narrow roads, and roaring trucks, I arrived in Persogianni, a beautiful restored stone village, 9 hours later.

This year, I returned for my 4th trip in May to continue photographing the people working with their hands. On July 20th, I returned again to witness and record the summer feast day of the prophet Elias in the mountain villages of Oxia and Kefalahori.

In Greece there’s a saying “miloundas pas stin poli” (in speaking we get to the city). Through conversation and inquiry we get to the truth. Over the past 4 years, I have spoken to many people along the way. People were always ready with a name of someone to look up—a cousin or friend in a particular village. Greece is a relatively small country; everyone knows someone somewhere. And once there, everyone was eager with suggestions. “You know, there’s a glacier lake on top of Mount Timfi above Vikos Gorge--very beautiful.” “Have you been to Zerma, the ghost town in the mountains abandoned 40 years ago?” Fani, a photographer friend in Thessalonika turned out to be a mutual friend of a sheeper, Taxis, whom I photographed in Kefalahori.

So I went to these places and talked to more people along the way. I learned about local customs--Persogianni has the best Panagia celebrations on August 15, food, dancing and musicians like no other. I learned that people would let me photograph their animals, the milking, shearing, all things if I agreed to bring back photos of them and their prize goat the next year. I learned too, that this became my passport back into the region. Bringing a photo back to the people put me back in with the people after 7 months away. And always, they were delighted with the photos and invited me in for coffee. My Greek got better and the radius of dots in Epirus expanded as more doors opened to me.

In asking, I have lost my fear and learned a deeper version of the first story I heard of the mountain villages of western Greece. In my first visit I encountered a village bereft of children, a village filled with elders. When I asked, villagers spoke of the stone masons of the 19th and 20th century, the mastorahoria who had built the villages of Epirus and then taken their trade around the world as far as America and Australia. Now some villages were abandoned, a few restored.

As I traveled farther, a new theme emerged. Not all of the young of Greece had made hast for the cities. Throughout the villages I met young men raising sheep, whole families making a living in the village--running a taverna, raising animals, celebrating marriages and feast days. Young men went off to college but returned to their village to run the family farm because the village offered a richness of friendship, family meetings and meals, year-round festivals, the manitari hunt (mushroom) in early spring in the mountains. Villagers were working with their hands in traditional ways as they used the benefits of the 21st century--cell phones and Nisson trucks to make their work easier. This was a “good news” story, one of people leading full whole lives even though the work was more difficult than those who left for jobs in Athens, Thessaloniki.

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June 14, 2005 Armenopetra

The beautiful kalivi, the kalivi full of spirit and texture, neither sits placidly at the end of a smooth road. All require hiking over rugged terrain through the brambles, looking far ahead for that pile of rocks that just might be a stately structure. But watch out for that branch just at nose height for giant garden spiders about to tangle in your hair.

Today it feels hard--no energy, eyes feeling crispy, head-achy probably the result of late afternoon swims in the still too-cool sea waters of early June. Now I wait by a fisherman’s hut high above the sea. The light will be soft on the rusted tin roof in just about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, I enjoy this rustic spot where the previous inhabitant loved it enough to plant a graceful oleander and prune the branches of his olive grove not so long ago. The kalives, simple farm buildings that dot the countryside of Greece, are a blend of simplicity of structure and natural aesthetics. What does this mean?

The materials are simple and local--stone and wood. But at the most humble of kalives, I always find the mark of someone who has tried to make the land beautiful—a wooden arbor with climbing grapes, a graceful oleander, the symmetry of an olive grove, and a scattering of amagdalia (almond) trees.

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Night Shooting

Night shooting suits my prowling nature. I love the feeling of being with the night, the sounds, the spirits. I am off-stage watching recording as the rituals, dramas and small happenings unfold.

I begin with one spot and from there the night takes off. Once the camera is set up, I note the time, “okay, I’ll give it 20 minutes with street lights” and then I wait and watch. My camera is recording each move of a branch, a cat racing across the viewfinder, a house that is just a house full of light and voices. Then at 17 minutes suddenly the visitor opens the door and “kaly nixtas” are exchanged. My camera lets them move and wonder how these final 3 minutes of motion will reveal themselves on my film.

I like being an observer of the night. Mostly no one sees me. I listen, I look and in doing this, the next photo reveals itself. A night shoot can easily go on all night in this way. While I wait, there is nothing to do but look and listen and in this way, many potential candidates reveal themselves.

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To Diafaterio mou…

Photographs of the people—farmers, bakers, shepherds--composed for the camera like an old-fashioned formal sitting—these I shoot every year and bring back to my subjects. Always I promise and always I return photos in hand the next year, a small doraki (gift) for all that my subjects give me.

Also, the photo is an entree. Finding the people, gets me back in with the people. I need to know when and where is the sheep shearing, the milking, the annual mushroom hunt to the mountains. A birth of a lamb or slaughtering a lamb for the next day’s kourema (sheep shearing).

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June 12, 2006 Persogianni, Epirus

In retrospect, it was the kind of day I had dreamed of in visiting Epiros. It began last night in Persogianni with a suggestion from Maria, the innkeeper and her daughter, Effie over a glass of wine. A “ghost town” called Zerma, she said. “You must go!” Turn left onto the main road, drive over the bridge, then the next left. That will take you there.

Up and up the mountain I went, the next day, 8 kilometers or more. Along the way, time turned back to the 1940’s and 50’s when Taxis Tloupas* photographed here. Cows spotted alpine green mountain sides. Black pines streaked the landscape with their craggy forms, rugged men and women tended cows and sheep with tall shepherd’s crooks and wore black woolen cloaks. Large shaggy herding dogs approached the car fearlessly and cows and goats walked the road as though I was the one who didn’t belong.

The road climbed getting rougher, more eroded by mud and water. I turned a curve and faced a bulldozer pushing back the mud in an attempt to clear the road. He yelled, leave your car and walk. What did I know? No map and thinking my ghost town was up ahead, I parked and started walking, tripod on my shoulder, camera bag on my back. A farmer passed me in an ancient pickup truck and I waved him down. Angelos, was friendly and puckish and began the usual inquiries as we drove: where are you from, where are you going, are you alone? We rode another winding 10 kilometers and arrived in a mountain village. It did not fit the description of Zerma. First, it was newish, and second, it was inhabited. My driver and I parted and I continued to explore the town. This certainly was not Zerma, so as the rain poured down in this mile high mountain village, I began to plot how I would get down the mountain to my car. Feeling hungry and cold, I went into the village taverna and sat around a wood stove with a group of shepherds and a grandma. I answered more questions, tried to keep up with the rapid-fire Greek and then decided to take a group photo. I pulled out my tripod, set up my Hasselblad and the group all took on a formal look for a studio portrait. I finished with a promise to bring a photo back for each next year.

Now I began my campaign to find a ride down the mountain in earnest, but all the men seemed amused by my request and only intent on drinking their tsiporo and eating metzetes, inviting me to join in. Another 30 minutes and more talk. Suddenly an angel appeared from the kitchen, Maria, who spoke some English and began to sort things out. Angelos agreed to give Papa Christos (the regional priest) and myself a ride to my car. Papa Christos would then show me the way to the legendary Zerma, and I would give him a lift to his village, Kefalahori. Another 30 minutes passed, the sun burst out through the mountain light, tspiros were finished and we began the long 10 kilometer zig-zag down the mountain. I survived a tongue lashing from Papa Christo after we retrieved my car and arrived at Zerma. One must not travel alone here because of the wild people? wild animals?, I was warned. But Zerma was a jewel, a 45 minute walk by foot round and round the canyons which I promised myself to take on the next day.

My adventure in Aetomilitsa, albeit naive, was an important marker. That day I discovered what I was seeking in Epirus--authenticity and old ways in abundance. I found people willing to help and I found a spirit of adventure in myself that would take me from the “dot on the map”, Persogianni, my first village to visit in Eprius to many more villages, many experiences and, most of all, many many photographs 5 years later. It also marked the start of my ritual gift or “doraki”, photographs of the people taken this year and brought back the next. Always the people are delighted and always they invite me for coffee on the spot. This is how I make friends. This is my passport into the next adventure.