Recent Posts

    Recent Comments

    No comments to show.

    The Encounter with Aleksa: A Life Lived Close to the Elements

    At first, Aleksa seemed like someone who simply lived differently —
    closer to nature, farther from comfort, carrying a kind of stillness that I couldn’t quite place.

    But the more time I spent watching her move through her days, the more I understood that this story wasn’t really about her at all. It was about everything around us: the way we live, the things we consume, the artificial world we’ve built to protect ourselves from the very life we come from.

    Aleksa didn’t challenge that world. She just stepped outside it.
    And in doing so, she held up a mirror I didn’t expect to look into.

    Lefkada, Greece | 2025

    A Summer Lived at the Edge of the Sea

    Aleksa lived like the summers before by the sea. She slept in a tent, swam at sunrise — naked, free, untouched — and worked as a jewelry artist in a small beach cantina nearby. There, she sold handwoven necklaces, bracelets, and earrings, each adorned with stones that caught the light as if they were breathing. She stood out — but not because she was loud. She was present. Open and kind, yet somehow distant — the kind of distance that feels learned, not chosen.

    Maybe that’s what happens when faces change every day and nothing stays. Still, I had the feeling she was carrying something — a weight, a story. Maybe she wasn’t trying to escape anything. Maybe she was simply listening — to herself, to the waves, to time. The choice to live that way — so close to nature, so far from comfort — seemed distant and almost exotic to me, both then and now. But maybe it wasn’t her after all. Maybe it’s us.

    We live in a world that has drifted far from its own nature. We eat food that’s safe but hollow. Tomatoes that never saw the sun. Bread that never breathes. Yogurt without life. Strawberries without soul. Even our hunger feels processed now. Everything looks perfect — and tastes like nothing. We traded flavor for shelf life, and called it progress. We poison ourselves quietly — with herbicides, microplastics, and fine dust. Things designed to protect us, now living in our blood. We sit in air-conditioned boxes, staring at screens, and call it living.

    From the eyes of someone living in 2050, it will all look strange. Archaic, even. A civilization that tried to turn itself into a machine — and failed halfway.

    Maybe the world would be a better place if we remembered how to be human again. And maybe, paradoxically, AI will be what forces us to do so — not by saving us, but by making us obsolete. Perhaps that’s when we’ll return to the land. To stillness. To ourselves.

    And probably that’s what Aleksa had already done — quietly, instinctively, without theory or plan. While I was searching for words to describe the world, she was simply living another version of it.

    Later I realized this wasn’t really about her — it was what her presence reflected back to me. A loop of observation and reflection — where one life touches another, and the echo turns into understanding. I often think back to where it started.

    A quiet beach on Lefkada. That’s where I met Aleksa — and where all of this began to unfold. The shape of her eyes, her sun-darkened skin, that unmistakable hairstyle. Impossible not to notice, especially for someone like me.

    How Our Paths First Crossed

    I approached her on the first evening and took a few photographs. She sat beside Barba Giannis — the man who worked the grill behind the kitchen — both of them sharing a Tsipouro, that clear Greek spirit distilled from grape pomace, somewhere between grappa and a memory of summer.

    My accommodation was in a nearby village, so this beach became my everyday place. A few days later, I offered to photograph her properly. She agreed — but it took almost three weeks until we finally made it on my last day during the golden hour happen.

    Into the Light: A Portrait Taking Shape

    Once we started, everything became instinct. There was no plan, just light, movement, and the sense that time was running out. The sun dropped faster than expected, and I tried to hold onto what little remained. Afterwards, I wasn’t sure what to think. Too self-critical, as always. It wasn’t until months later, while editing, that I understood what the series was about.

    Because the images that stayed with me weren’t the posed ones. They were the quiet moments — when she stopped performing, when the wind interrupted her movements, when her eyes told a story I couldn’t quite name. Looking back, this encounter stayed with me far longer than I realized. Not because of the photographs — but because of what they made me see. ❂