The worst migration crisis since World War II. (The pictures are from Lesvos island, Greece)
…
I have no words to express myself, to describe the pictures or my emotions and I really I don’t want to do it.
The only thing that I know is that I went to Lesvos island to cover the arrival of the refugees with suspicious thoughts about them and after just one day I started “seeing” in several boats my daughter, my wife and myself
The abandoned Asylum of incurability “New martyr Georgios” inside the city of Ioannina in Greece.
If I understood well the hospital closed on 2009 and the people lived there went to another place out of the city, the old Asylum remain closed all these years
Now the only visitors who enter illegally, jumping a small fence, are mostly photographers, thieves and drug addicts, looking to find each lost paradise
This story started from my curiosity to see this unique place from some pictures I saw and from the stories I was heard about the old Asylum from friends living and studying in Ioannina
Then it evolved into exercise of courage for myself and secondary a photography test, because I strongly believe that in every place were people had suffer the specific place still have their energy, their cry, their mood.
So in this place, years before souls with problems lived there.
All the time even if I was in the middle of the day I had strange feelings…
..the things around me, seems like someone left them for a while
and the owners from moment to moment they will return and they will ask me why I disturb them, why I am there, and from whom I took the permission for this visit
Even now when I am writing this, I have this disturbing feeling that someone was with me all the time and for this reason again and again I am looking carefully to find him in the reflections, hiding in the shadows, behind the windows, in the dark rooms in the pictures
I want to share the mood and the feeling of the moment, this was the reason why I edited the pictures in B/W even if I am fan of the colour pictures.
Also, I have to apologize because I found nothing to say about the asylum, nobody knows and nobody talks and in researching I did in web I found again nothing
I hope the municipality of Ioannina to realise the value of this abandoned hospital, they have to protect it because it is pity this unique place to don’t be a center of culture and spirit
One of the most impressive things that make you believe again in humans,
to believe that together we can do it, is “the other human”.
(In Greek: “Ï ¢ëëïò ¢íèñùðïò”/ “O Allos Anthropos”)
In Greece, the last few years, hope is more and more lost, the smile is harder to find and
what you face is more and more stooped shoulders.
A few years ago (during the economic crisis) an idea was born by Kostas Polychronopoulos
Kostas Polichronopoulos
to bring people together to communicate again with focus on one basic need: food.
He thought to go out on the streets with a pot and cook for everyone:
black and white, homeless and sheltered.
Not by charity, anyone who is hungry can eat.
So the simple things (because life is found in simplicity, as ancient Greeks said:
“Wisdom is shown in clarity”,
became routine and it grew stronger and it became something stable.
You can visit the blog where you can find the program and find out where is the next appointment and if you want and you can go and help “The other human” with whatever you can, a package of pasta, rice etc.
Without the help and support of political parties, NGOs, the church, charities, Kostas, who does not want “hats”(someone over him), managed to make the world talk about “the other human” and
“The other human” became an institution and created anticipation for the hungry for the next appointment.
We all need the other human, we all need another human, just by ourselves we cannot make it, we can take a look around and it is proved daily.
I am sad, today is a “rainy” day for me I learned the death of a man who just met a few years before
but it was in my heart like a member of my little family.
He was the doctor who brought my daughter to light,
was the man who refused to take my money because at that time I was poor economic
was the obstetrician who gave birth says half Greece (60,000 babies),
Had the morals of humanity and kindness not characterize
unfortunately the majority of today’s doctors.
I remember his smile in my fears,
I remember the hours of waiting his unique jokes in a hospital
that was literally his second home
My daughter, is fortunate to be one of the Dimitris Chasiako’s babies
Every year on her birthday, we had and have a seat for you at the table of memory and joy.
My Doctor bon voyage, now you can relax, You won your place in Paradise
