The Greek island of Kythera takes central stage at the Half King Photo Series in New York, from November 17 to January 3, 2016, through the photos of Kristina Williamson, who lived and worked among Kytherians for over a year, aiming to see how emigration, modernization, and globalization were affecting the island’s tiny community.
Her images were published in a volume in 2013, a visual contemplation of the contradictions of modernity, of ‘what endures from the past and what is gone—glimmering through the dream of things that were’. The book won third place for Best Documentary Photography Book at the International Photography Awards (2015).
One Year on Kythera is a ‘visual document of what stitches together Kythera’s communities—traditions that prevail, despite a foreboding future, its inhabitants and its culture’. It is a contemporary look into the lives of those who have chosen to remain on the island; the ways in which they maintain a traditional way of life and those in which their lifestyles are changing. Williamson’s photographs unveil Kythera as a complex, beautiful place, ‘defined by its relationship to the sea and its rocky green hills, where young and old enact with humor the rituals that define community’.
Kythera is also the location of Kythera Mon Amour, a film to be released by the end of the year. Filmed in the summer of 2015, it is a story of love, migration and longing for a home set in some of the most beautiful locations of the island. The film, feature-length homage to Kythera, documents not only the island’s landscape and people but also some of its less tangible aspects – the air, the waves, the sounds and the atmosphere.
Watch: Study Abroad-One Year on Kythera; Kythera Mon Amour Trailer
See also: A cultural archive for Kythera; Is Kythira the perfect Greek island?
