Article by Harrys Pourouzidis
Cover photo by Sotiris Tzoumerkas
Edited by Harrys Pourouzidis
Somewhere in the Delta of Axios river, at Kalochori, gazing at the dawn, I found myself thinking in symbols. I found myself breathing in the sunrise as it gleamed red and gold upon the waters of the Thermaic Gulf. And while I should have been searching for my frame through the camera’s viewfinder, the calm within my soul was whispering to me to listen to my surroundings.
Life in the Delta.
The Delta of Life.
The endless cycle of survival, born of hunger, both literally and metaphorically. And I wondered how a place so full of life could be so calm and quiet. Then I understood that the essence of life is serenity, the thing that gives our passage through this world the support we need in order to continue.
“I’ll meet you at the delta, where the rivers run into the sea.” I remembered that line, and in my mind I saw life running endlessly, like the river in the song, until it reaches the vast and the unknown.
At the Delta, whose sign in mathematics symbolises change, life changes too. There it matures. There it is finally full, and with one push it is transformed into something else. These places seem as if they were made to make you think differently. And as I have written somewhere else in the past:
“Life unfolds before us in countless paths, asking us to choose it in its entirety. And we steer our little boats through them, like fishermen in the Delta, always moving forward in a particular direction.”
Images are offered to us generously with every step on the walks we have taken, either as a group or individually, in the Axios Delta.
Its people are simple, and its nature is flat, yet anything but boring. Its animals are wonderfully varied, meeting one another as they arrive from the three realms of the world: land, water, and air. And everything seems to live in harmony.
With every visit to the Delta, we find something different that speaks to our muse and urges us to create images.
What more could anyone ask of such a place?
