To all you friends and family out there and people that I know, I know I've been away for such a long time from the city, more than 2 months, so here are some card postales, memoirs from the idyllic vacations from my Greek island.
I'm not being sarcastic, I've been living in a bubble, in an area of the island were no refugees land. Plus, passing from this camp between Petra and Molyvos while there were still refugees in it I don't stop. I continue to Eftalou to take some interviews and have a hot spring. I mean, these people pass through a hell of a time, the last thing they need is a guy with a camera. And for me, working the land in the fields needs some healing water for the body. I hear a lot of stories from Elefteria, who runs the springs and from other people, Greeks or Germans and English who live or come year after year in the island. Returning back and seeing the camp empty my first response is to drive on but something feels like going back.
Following an instinct, what keeps me here and make these photos is something with the personal and collective unconsciousness. How we consume the looks of these people with our televised canibalism followed by apathy but we don't allow them to be seen. We let them become ghosts, phantoms. Like the other night when I'm driving on the main road between Kaloni and Mytilini and I see a flash light moving in pacing and behind it started appear shadows of a group of about 20 people. It is around 8pm and maybe they can make it to the city around dawn in this dump night. No faces can be seen, just shadows, like walking to or from the underworld. The one that we're all afraid and we pretend to turn our back to.
Back in the camp today, turns out that the Greek and Austrian prima ballarinas are on the island to talk sollutions. That can explain the Turkish coast guard and navy I see patrolling in the middle of the sea passage. No new arrivals today. The people I saw earlier in the camp were 200-300 which were probably left from the 2 previous days were 4000 and 5000 people crossed the sea. The camp might be empty now but I see presence in the items I photograph. I haven't manipulated anything before taking a photo. Also, no time to edit the photos afterwards, need also some sleep.
I talk to some of the Europeans working on site, most of the young people who came to the island to volunteer, some been already up to 4 months, many of them from Norway, Holland, England. They tell me I need to register as photographer in an unofficial desk in a tavern called the Captain's Table. I tell I'm what you see, not employed by anyone, living on the island but I'll check the captain next time, and everything is settled. Dutch Tobias tells me he managed to get some descent sleep since there were no arrivals today. Usually it's 3 hours. He tells me the land-the strip of dirt road by the side of the road-of the camp belongs to a company. I'm trying to remember the name, Blackfish, no, that is a movie, Goldfish, no, this is my memory, Fairfish? Something with fish for sure and surely our politicians must know. The sign of UN and some NGOs are on the tents.
I'm writting this humming the Rock The Kasbah. So that's it for now. Just a part of my stay in the island. I also go swimming. And from what I've seen up to now, the local people have been giving help from their heart to the refugees, truly Aegean, hospitality as sacredness. Which is great but seems to lack some organisation and structure for which we should be thankfull to these volunteering Northern Europeans.
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