Athens + Crete

Charles and I went to Greece for a friend's wedding in October, and had a great time! Food revelations included novel sorbet flavours (walnut, spicy pumpkin), the best fries I've ever had in my life from a highway-side restaurant, a honey-cured olive, and some kind of whipped yogurt + honey which had a texture I've never encountered before and will haunt me forever. I spent some time reading up on myth and history, and now my Instagram algorithm is sending me some pretty dank history memes.

In the last year or two I'd been feeling really alienated from the process of making art! While in Greece I really enjoyed walking the city and noticing little details; the way storefront grates are made, and the incredible tiny cars that are everywhere. I loved our visit to the Alexandros Soutsos museum, which had a wonderful temporary exhibit on Panayiotis Tetsis.

I also especially enjoyed works by Gyzis Nikolaos, Parthenis Konstantinos, and Tsarouchis Yannis. Spending time with these paintings felt like an invitation back into making images - the scale, the roughness of textures, the strange vibrancy of colours.

I took the Fuji XT-20 with me, with a 28mm manual focus lens - sometimes photos come out the way I want them to, but as often means that I learn lessons the hard way and everything is out of focus, or over/underexposed. (It's fun though.)

A few photos below, most likely horribly compressed. Maybe clicking on them will make them look better?

Shuffling towards the Parthenon

We took an overnight ferry to Crete!

Beer, red velvet cake and a cigarette, dinner of champions

We arrived at Heraklion at 6 AM in the dark and wandered around until we could pick up the rental car

Heraklion Port

I saw a comedic post about Greek beaches requiring a ridiculous hike to get to - it turns out to not be a joke

Close to where the wedding took place - I thought mediterranean-set paintings were exaggerating the lighting but it actually just looks like that