These photographs attempt to speak the silences defining family albums which tend to exclude images that disturb the notion of a ‘happy family’.  So I reread / reshot family photographs  trying to see what they say about my family, what they do not say, the questions they raise, and trying to demonstrate what lies behind family warmth and happiness, the unconventional family situations that are incompatible with what one expects a family should or wishes to be. 

Greek islands are advertised as idyllic locations where one can swim in transparent waters, enjoy picturesque sunsets, move around on donkeys, drink and eat, places of delight, entertainment, and relaxation. In reality most of them are crowded, noisy places, densely built, with huge hotels, places where everything is expected to serve tourism.  Yet there are still traces from an earlier era when things were different. This project depicts these traces, ‘desert islands’ are the islands of my youth.

People in familiar, daily, ordinary settings and yet they do not belong there. They are elsewhere: thinking, dreaming, smiling, bored, distressed, sad…. They are in places inaccessible to the viewer who is left to wonder, and becomes involved in speculations. People catching our attention by doing nothing, by being oblivious to us, lost in a private world of their own.

“Let there be light.” This is how it all started. Rays of light fall on everything: buildings, bodies, faces, furniture, clothes, flowers. Divided in two and three they converse with the light but also with the shadows and the darkness creating unexpected shapes and scenes of beauty in daily life that deserve to be recognized.