Journey through the Greek Islands
by Simone Filpa
portfolio special mention call 'Urbanautica Institute Awards 2024', 2024
Category: Anthropology and Territories
"In the middle of the Aegean Sea, where the sky and the sea blend together. Where you can feel yourself as infinite, capable of connecting to all things. Here, immense possibilities unfold before you." I was writing this in my notebook while wandering among the islands of Sifnos and Milos, part of the Cyclades complex. The islands of Greece are beautiful, with spectacular seas, excellent food and a constant feeling of peace and relaxation that envelops visitors. For me, they were revelatory—a landscape for confronting my language, my photography and my memories. A journey that brought forth my own way of telling the world through images. An intimate sphere, based on the experience of being in the place and listening to the people. Based on encounters. Like the one with Apostolos, a farmer from Sifnos, whom I met while he was uprooting his vegetable crops because they were infected with a disease. He spoke of the scarcity of rain, the changing weather due to climate change, and the feeling of helplessness in the face of it. Or the one with Costa, a well-known figure to anyone visiting the village of Kastro on Sifnos. He raises sheep and goats on the hill near the village, living off that and managing a small bar where he often talks about revolution and how Europe has become just a dream in an empty box. Or the encounters with tourists on the island of Milos, busy visiting the beautiful beaches and coasts but often indifferent to the transformations that mass tourism brings. Abandoned cars no longer in use due to the presence of multiple rental cars, places turning into dumps for discarded items and junkyards selling washing machine and dishwasher parts, all in pursuit of a sometimes predatory tourism economy. Or the one with the feast of the island's patron saint at the monastery of St. John Siderianos, where the spirit of community and togetherness becomes a cultural and identity moment that can take you back to your childhood memories. These islands thus become one of many places in transformation from the old traditional-agricultural-cultural world to a modern-rational-economic one. In this journey, I sought to follow these transformations, observe the changes, and find my own voice.
Review by URBANAUTICA
Some Greek islands still appear today in their austere presence—rudimentary, sun-baked, surrounded by waters that have kissed their shores since the dawn of time, indifferent to the destinies of humankind and especially to the tourists who crowd their beaches in search of authenticity and a dose of vitamin D. Suspended between sea and sky, far from the noise of cities and the distractions of modern life, they have long offered a place for the mind to expand toward the horizon. It is no coincidence that the cradle of so much philosophy, art, and cultural imagination lies scattered across these very routes of sand and rock dropped into the Mediterranean, almost as if the gods had placed stepping stones for themselves. Here, Filpa confronts his own language, the sense of looking, and questions what bind personal memory to landscape.These islands and their inhabitants seem indifferent to the fate of progress, which leaves behind traces of cars and refrigerators, as if what arrives from elsewhere—what lands from afar—did not truly belong to them and therefore required no response. And yet progress stands at their doorstep, with low-cost flights and herds of tourists ready to burn their skin and spend a year’s savings. Looking at these photographs of endless vistas, scorched skies, and burned earth, one wonders: for how much longer? Before the galleons arrive with blaring music, globetrotting cuisine, air-conditioned apartment blocks, and shops selling cheap towels and souvenir bracelets. There is a vernacular tenderness in the photographer’s gaze as he captures fragments of an identity that already feels lost—like living creatures on the verge of extinction. Observing all this awakens a serene unease.
And yet, this is not the whole story. Filpa’s photographs unfold through encounters: Apostolos, the farmer who speaks of drought and climate change; Costa, the shepherd-philosopher of Kastro, discussing revolution and a Europe emptied of meaning; the tourists of Milos, often oblivious to the transformations induced by mass tourism, leaving behind abandoned cars, makeshift dumps, and scraps turned into merchandise. Then there is the feast of the island’s patron saint, where the spirit of community stitches together an ancient identity.
Journey through the Greek Islands is an immersion in the Cyclades, in the islands of Sifnos and Milos. In the heart of the Aegean, where sky and sea merge into a single breath and where one can feel connected to everything, carried by horizons and long sunsets, the photographer finds an intimate and revealing dimension. That peace which so often envelops visitors becomes, for Filpa, a laboratory in which to confront his memory and understand how he wishes to narrate the world.
also from Urbanautica Institute Awards 2024