PRESPES - Within mountains, there lies.
Hard to put this experience in words, but I can say it shaped me, and looking back, it was maybe one of the best choices I made for the course of my career.
It was 2015, and I was hungry and eager to get my photography career moving. Although I had been freelancing for a few years, I felt stagnant. I believed I needed something to shake me up a little but really, I was desperate for a mentor, for guidance, for someone to teach me how to see more than just a “good image.” I wanted to understand meaning beyond.
That’s when I stumbled upon the postgraduate degree at UAL — MA Photojournalism and Documentary Photography. Everything I read about it excited me. I was amazed by the professors, and I felt like I had found “the solution” to whatever it was I was searching for.
But first, I needed a portfolio to apply. So, in the summer of 2015, I decided to go out and build one. With my then very limited contacts, I reached out to the Society for the Protection of Prespa (SPP) in Greece. I shared my enthusiasm for their work and their region, and offered to create images they could use for their own promotion while I built a portfolio for my application.
Guess what? They said yes.
I had managed to save enough from commercial work that year to afford the trip and I even brought along my best friend, Elias. That made it even more special: a once-in-a-lifetime experience with a friend, while stepping into something totally new. We spent almost two months there, two months that ended up shaping the next decade of my life.
Looking back at the images now, I can see how young and inexperienced I was and I’m even more grateful for the way SPP welcomed us. They didn’t just give us access; they gave us care, guidance, and, honestly, love.
It’s amazing how you can arrive somewhere as a stranger and be greeted with such generosity.
I also see how my images were still very “old me.” In the years before, I had been stubbornly working on a project called This is Your Cyprus, a body of work that got me started in photography and that I owe a lot to (but more on that in another post). The influence of that early process clearly bled into my Prespa project. I don’t see it as good or bad, just an interesting fact I notice now.
So why Prespa? Because it was the first trans-boundary protected area in the Balkans, shared by Greece, Albania, and Northen Macedonia. It’s a globally unique natural area, with rare geomorphology, rich ecology, and incredible biodiversity. But, just as important for me at the time, I spoke the language, I could get access, and it was manageable in terms of logistics and expenses (which mattered a lot). And yes, this was my first-ever trip to Greece. People teased me when I got there: “Silvio, this isn’t really representative of Greece!” But I fell in love with it anyway.
What captivated me most in those first encounters was the feeling of life within a vibrant stillness. During our explorations, Elias and I noticed that the silence was broken only by the sounds of wood being cut, or shepherds calling their goats. Peeking through that window into another rhythm of life made me realize that Prespa opened a doorway to a different Europe, one of the past, but also one of borderless nature, where people live and work day in and day out to protect and nurture a place they love.
And in the end, we did what we set out to do, we created images for SPP, and they put them to good use which was beautiful to see. Even more surprisingly, I got accepted into my Masters degree (still feels like a shocker when I think about it).
