Hi there, I am Spyros.
A photographer that first found himself on a volcanic island in Greece. You guess right, this island is Santorini!
I come from the southwestern suburbs of Athens and after going through challenging experiences to mature, a deep love for photography and a girl brought me in Thira, which happents to be the official name of Santorini. I am grateful to live on this island most of a year’s months since 2016.
In order to understand why I visually narrate wedding and couples’ stories through photography, I find it helpful to share with you two definitive stories about me.
When my grandmother passed away in 2012, we moved a lot of stuff from her house in Athens to our holiday residence in Arcadia, the middle prefecture of the Peloponnese peninsula. Books, furniture and lots of boxes with photographs that mostly my late grandfather had captured during his lifetime. I was quite curious to discover pictures of my family that had the idiosyncratic perspective of my grandfather. We have the same name and I always felt a respectful connection to him. What I found inside these boxes touched me so deeply that a couple of years after, in 2014, I would start learning more about the craft and eventually become a photographer. I feel that I am continuing and evolving his love for photography.
The story about how I dived into photography comes from my paternal family. From the family of my mother’s side comes a story about diversity, love and traveling. My late grandfather Jimmy traveled from Greece to the United States of America during the 50’s. After the Civil War ended in Greece, five brothers who were born in a village 750 meters above the sea level, surrounded by the majestic Taygetos Mountain in Peloponnese, migrated to the western side of the Atlantic Ocean. Years after, he met my grandmother Elsie, a sweet American woman from the American South with roots from Ireland and Germany. His eternal love for his home country led him to travel to Greece every year with my grandmother for more than 3 decades to keep his connection with his birthplace and family.
It is a great privilege to have roots in two countries which are so far from each other. My grandparents were such a diverse couple but they had a bond for more than 50 years because of love. Their story has defined a great part of who I am and how I connect with people from culturally diverse backgrounds through photography.