Picked By The Moment (Gypsy Buddhas Under The Olive Tree)

Every year, during the olive picking season (around October-November), people from all around the world gather at Osho Afroz meditation center, in Eressos-Lesvos, for to weeks, to participate in  harvesting the olives from the trees of the center. Some of them have previous experience and others not, with the main reason for participating -from my point of view- is to experience a direct contact with nature and a traditional way of interacting with it. Eventhought it might seem as a heterogenous multinational crowd at first sight, the event could probably be one (if not the only) of the rarest occasions were the olive picking is happening naturaly and traditionaly, with no machines and technology involved, and most of all, in a communal way, as it was taking place for all of human history. For me, this one of the reasons that makes it an exceptional event. Another one is that it takes place in the space of meditation. This is a story of the olive picking season of filmed in Octobre 2017. The person interviewed, Wolfgang from Germany, is not a sannyasin and it was his first time in the center, which I believe gives a certain freshness to his testimony. Finally, the thing is that words, not even images, are not enough to describe what an amazing experience is to be in the Buddha field of Osho Afroz and in Eressos...

Albanian Roma "ghetto" neighborhood in the middle of Athens

These photos are from a part of Athens that used to be the nearby country side and the olive grove of the old city. You can see the Acropolis from there, it's just a 5-10 minute ride from the center. It is now the district of transit and logistic companies, small factories, a heavy traffic and polluted area, a ghetto for people like the Roma that have come from Albania almost 20 years ago and occupied a big field. Their work is to roam around the city and collect scrap metal. Out of material thrown from houses that go under reinovation, they build their shacks. But these shacks are their homes full of life, children's voices, passion. The pictures are taken in the summer of 2010.

Orfeas In The Street, Elaionas neighborhood, Athens

Elaionas means Olive Grove.It is the name of a large area very close to the center of Athens but also very distant from the urban collective consciousness. Being undermined for decades as a place for the transport and logistic companies, for small-but polutant- factories and as a "ghetto" for people like Roma (check my earlier post http://eliastaris.blogspot.com/2010_09_01_archive.html)it is a place were most Athenians haven't or don't wish to visit. But it also a historical place, it was the olive grove of ancient Athens. The last years a debate is going on around the "reconstruction" of it. The series of pictures that i present here, is foe me my connection with (one of) the essence of photography. Without a commision or a plan about the outcome of the project, it's just me and my camera, wandering around the area, exposing-reflecting myself on unknown streets, opening up to whatever might appear. Since it's not a commisioned project, i don'r have much time to give to it. But posting these pictures now is like a wish for the new year to explore more on those streets.