Some images of the street life in the Greek villages of Northern Crete.
"WALKING FROM KOUTOULOUFARI"
It's hot. The mercury is nudging thirty degrees when I
leave the village of Koutouloufari. Within a few minutes
I reach the crossroads where the tavernas and shops finish
and pass the white painted church with blue gates set back
from the road against the ever present Mount Pyrgias.
I stop to take a few photographs of the panoramic view
stretching down to the coast and the Bay of Hersonissos,
the olive grove golden in the bright Cretan sun.
I'm on my way to the next village, Piskopiano, and pause
to make some quick reference sketches in my notebook of
another group of olive trees set against the mountain
backdrop.
I reach the edge of the next village, quiet in the heat of the
day. The big Greek Orthodox church is set back off the main
road and I take a seat in the shade of a taverna opposite.
I order a beer and set up my sketchbook and camera overlooking
the big square in front of the church with it's gleaming white
frontage and terracotta decorations. I'm drawn more to the
original 14th.century church next door with its bell tower and
dangling rope tied to the outside wall. This is what I'll draw in
my small sketchbook and note the name "The Church of the
Presentation Mary".
My eye is suddenly drawn to the priest who has come out of
the church and is walking swiftly across the square, his grey-blue
cassock swaying around his ankles as he reaches the door of the
older building. I manage to fire off a couple of photographs before
he's gone.
The white painted houses with blue doors and shutters are so
typically Greek, but I want to photograph and draw the Cretan
village characters so I leave the taverna and head back to the tiny
main street.
On the corner of the narrow road, leading to the church, a big guy
is sat on a white plastic garden chair, playing with his worry beads
and watching the world go by. I stop to smooth a tortoiseshell cat
that's asleep on the wall of a shop selling rugs for the tourists when
an old lady, dressed all in black, walks up the hill. I manage to snatch
two quick pictures of her as she inspects the goods outside of the shop.
I walk on to the village of Hersonissos Old town, a world away from
it's modern namesake down on the coast less than two miles away.
Outside of a shop, just off the main square, a dog sits patiently waiting
for some food scraps.
The "old boys" of the village sit at a taverna table in the square,drinking
their small, thick, black coffees with glasses of iced water whilst they
talk and smoke. Meanwhile a cat positions itself by a nearby table, it's
wearing a paper napkin fashioned as a bandana around it's neck.
As I leave the village I see a young boy who is leaning over a wall
watching an old lady eat her lunch,sitting in the shade at the front of
her house. I snatch two quick shots ,one of each of them.
Is she the boy's grandmother?
I saunter back along the way I came - back to Koutouloufari.
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