GREEK ISLAND SERIES

I was travelling in the Greek Islands on September 11, 2001. These photographs are from a series I took over the six days following the tragic events in New York and were deeply influenced by the dual awareness of horror and beauty.

CYCLADEAN LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

When the volcanic heart of Thera exploded,
it cast the islanders and their sophisticated daily rituals
of high culture to their deaths.
It winged ash on the Aegean winds
and spilled a tsunami into the sea
that flooded Kriti
hundreds of miles away
and tolled the collapse of the Minoan culture.

The catastrophe left silence,
bareboned beauty, sheer pumice cliffs,
and a preternaturally calm caldera
one thousand feet below
Three thousand five hundred years later,
the waters are broken now
only by dolphin and sailors.

Please enter this place and time beyond opposites.
Let yourself be infused
with the ruthless, evanescent light
and timeless sculpture
of the Cyladean Islands.

Let your imagination open her wings.
Let your breath slow, perhaps,
to the pace of a wind across the caldera
on a late summer day
a day after your world and beliefs
fell from the sky.

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