PHOTOGRAPHY Kostas Balafas Costas Balafas speaks * […] I was born in a rugged Epirot village, which was as if it had been born itself to struggle first of all with nature itself to be able to survive on the cross-grained land where it was born. And there was a great yearning to go to foreign parts. And I too left home early for the purpose of making a living, as soon as I'd finished elementary school -I finished it and didn't finish it. I was then eleven years old and worked in a dairy. Before I started to use a camera, I'd written a few things in pencil on a pad, my experiences. Because I wrote some things about my boss which were not all that complimentary, they tore up my pad and was very upset about that, because I had there all my experiences, how I left my village, how I went to a city where I saw lights which weren't put out by the rain and the wind, how... anyway, was able to help myself and my family. Some of his relatives came to visit this boss from America, Greek-Americans, and he thought it his duty to give them a guided tour of various parts. One day they had the idea of going up Parnitha, and also of taking a photograph as a memento. Those were the days of the little Kodak Brownie boxes which were very cheap; they were easy to use because they had a fixed lens and did not require special handling. But somebody had to hold this box for them to be photographed, and they assigned the task to me. When I saw that could imprint on paper what I saw before me, I was enchanted and said to myself "With such a tool I'd like to set down my experiences and make a record of the people I’ ve known and toiled with, with whom I've experienced joys and sorrows". And the fullness of time came so that with a watch and a few savings I was able to acquire a little camera. It was a Junior Kodak with a 7,7 lens. After that I bought another by selling that one and again with a few savings I bought a Robot. With the Robot and with a film which literally fell from heaven, in an Italian bomber which the anti-aircraft guns shot down at Yannena, I managed to carry on; I cut the film into pieces, loaded the spools and so photographed the Struggle. […]For me, in the whole of my work, the central pivot of my subject-matter is man and his reactions to life. His struggle for survival, and even more, people with pain, because we have formed a bad impression of pain. Pain is our ally, it is our friend, it informs us that if our hand hurts, something is happening there, and we have to look into it. Then, also in life itself, the axis of life moves between pain and distress. Either you will suffer or you will be distressed in life. Because it was precisely into this psychology of people that I have always wanted to enter, under their skin, that is, and to bring out something internal of their own, I wanted to do the same thing here, on the Holy Mountain. What I want to photograph happens first in my imagination, and then take it; I don't take photographs at random, bam, bam, bam, this thing, the other thing. I take certain functional groups which make an impression on me, but which have some deeper meaning. For this reason I can't say, I'm going to do this and this, you know, and for this reason. If I find myself somewhere where the subject stirs me, then I form images in my brain. And lie in wait for the moment and the position in which will take them, love the world and I photograph the world. Some local newspaper in Edessa did a critique of me, and I mention this not because it flatters me, but because it's the truth. It said at one point: "In the temple of Costas Balafas, take off your shoes, because his figures are purified by toil and deprivation", and it is indeed so. Everyone accused me to start with of photographing wretchedness and misery. I showed no one my photographs. I followed my own road. And I think I didn't make a bad job of it. To take a picture of some chrysanthemums, even of a rocking boat, is not a big deal. Here we have a sensational people which have passed through fire and tribulation, the maypole of Yusuf the black and the rope of father-Cosmas. It is this people that I photograph. Note From the album Costas Balafas. A Photographic Itinerary on Mount Athos 1969-2001. Mount Athos Photographic Archive – Benaki Museum, Photographic archive, Mount Athos - Athens 2006.