Platon

In the middle of the sapphire-blue Aegean Sea lies Paros, a tiny island with an ancient history. Part of the Cycladic islands, Paros has been famous for its sparkling white marble statuary for thousands of years. Renowned British portrait photographer Platon (born 1968), who traces his family roots there, has inhabited the island on and off since he was a young boy. Beginning 40 years ago, he began to capture the cadences and textures of its unique identity, which is defined by its relationship to the ocean and the sun. His black-and-white images capture the serene rhythm of life there—young girls in elaborate traditional dress preparing for a village festival, a weary farmer crouched in front of his grape vines to escape the beating sun, a donkey making its way up a stony path and the proprietor of the village coffee shop taking a break, his table cluttered with a full ashtray, Greek coffee and a glass of ouzo. The photographs reveal a place that was slow to adopt the technology and frenetic pace of life that had already overtaken much of the planet by the 1980s and ’90s.