The secret lives of the Balkan summer

The series The Secret Lives of the Balkan Summer is a visual diary recording moments of summer in the countryside with a setting in Northern Greece. The medium is the forgotten lens of the family camera that lay dormant for 25 years and was revived with film from the 90s.

Summer is captured honestly, unpretentiously, provincially through the routine and its small interruptions that break it up: short escapes within a full working day, cigarette breaks, waiting for the bus, concerts, working days in the city and moments of peace with friends, picking vegetables from the garden, hanging out on the beach with an umbrella and a chair, sleeping in the caravan, festivals, improvised parties for the local football team.

The work explores, through the materiality of film, small moments that we do not perceive, but are imprinted in the mind and the camera, the feeling, sound and image of small summer rituals, as well as the handmade, human dimension of the photographic subject and object. It is an unpretending, deeply personal narrative that reveals the hidden lives of a Balkan summer — raw, homely, real.