A photographic story
Gavdos is a small island south of Crete: the southernmost point of Greece and Europe. An arid ecosystem dominated by sand dunes, junipers and pines. Far away from the cities, connected to the larger island of Crete by a small boat that can’t operate in strong winds (in the winter, sometimes there is no boat for more than ten days), it is hard to reach.
Very few permanent residents live on Gavdos, most of them of older age. In the winter, it is often the case that fewer than 80 souls are on the island. There is no petrol station or pharmacy, and just last year the last remaining family abandoned it because there was no secondary school for their children to attend.
In the summer, the island floods with vacationers, and with small-scale entrepreneurs and workers involved in tourism who leave again at the end of the tourist season. Owing to its small size and remote location, the island has to a great extent preserved its traditional character and serves as a holiday destination for people seeking not a luxurious lifestyle, but something simple, authentic and close to nature, far from concrete, noise, and consumerism. In recent decades the economy of Gavdos has been living off of the summer vacationers, the great majority of whom visit it in order to camp in its nature.
The first holiday destination for campers visiting Gavdos was the northeastern beach of Sarakiniko. When campers first arrived there, they were met with a pristine beach surrounded by sand dunes and junipers. Today that beach is surrounded by dozens of buildings, and campers, tavernas, mini-markets and rooms-to-let all find themselves on the same beach. Just three years ago, the island’s municipality began enforcing anti-nudism regulations —in beach where, from the time the very first campers arrived there, nudism had been commonplace— by putting up signs and making arrests (an article appeared on the BBC with the title ““Gavdos: The European island known for nudity”, which notes that “many worry that the recent ban on nudity at Sarakiniko may soon extend elsewhere in Gavdos, and thus endanger the island’s DNA”).
As Sarakiniko “developed”, more and more campers gradually migrated toward the more inaccessible northwestern part of the island. To reach these beaches, one must first make it to the end of the road —where today there are three tavernas and two mini-markets, which remain closed in wintertime— and from there walk along the coastal path: apt 10–15 minutes you reach the beach of Ai-Giannis, in 30–40 minutes the beach of Lavrakas, in 45–60 minutes the beach of Stavrolimni, and in an hour to an hour and a half the beach of Pyrgos. Throughout this entire area, the natural landscape continues to this day to remain in pristine condition: a landscape dominated by sand dunes, junipers, and pines, inaccessible by any kind of vehicle, with no trace of concrete, electricity, or running water. In this area, as the decades passed, campers gradually built what are known as kavátzes: some of these are no more than a juniper offering good shade surrounded by a ring of small stones, others have stones or a piece of wood arranged to form a more comfortable seat, others have stones stacked to help the sand remain level.
Past the beach of Lavrakas —once you have moved far enough from “civilization”— you will encounter a well, as well as a small lavoir; at some less visible place you might also come across an improvised stone oven (somewhere thereabouts there is even an improvised ceramic kiln, which is concealed again after each use!)… all of which is built by the “community”: the people who have come to love the island, care about it, and return again and again to spend time there. Until not long ago, at two or three spots you would have found small “coffee spots”: not much more than a table surrounded by one or two wooden benches made from driftwood… shaded places that served as communal spaces for socializing: if you were to pass by during summertime you would see people sitting in the shade, conversing, playing chess, making coffee, playing live music, painting stones with watercolors, organizing short expeditions to (even more) remote beaches… with a simple “hi” anyone could join in.
The “community” had also put up wooden signs —painted by hand with care— informing visitors not yet familiar with the island about the particular sensitivity of the local environment: the junipers, whose extensive root systems slow down erosion (to which Gavdos —an island made of sand, clay, and sandstone— is especially vulnerable), grow very slowly in this arid environment: it is vital that visitors who have not yet developed a more sensitive awareness of how to coexist with the ecosystem should take extra care not to break any branches or roots that “get in their way”… On Gavdos the prevailing culture is one of not imposing your own will upon the natural landscape, but of adapting yourself to it. Also of importance is raising awareness about collecting all rubbish, using biodegradable soaps, and so on.
Over the decades, a few people came to love this natural environment so deeply that they decided to try to stay there more permanently. Over the years, these people built by hand a few of small huts, around twenty in total across the island, most of them scattered inside Kedré —the forest between the beaches of Lavrakas and Stavrolimni— in well-concealed spots. They were constructed mainly from natural materials (principally from driftwood, branches, and clay), with nothing imported from outside (no trace of building materials such as concrete, bricks, iron, etc.) except for some covering of tarp or plastic sheeting to achieve a degree of waterproofing, without any foundations or use of machinery, and without any trees being felled. These huts, just like the open “coffee spots” and the well situated in more central locations, all built by people who were there because the beauty of the place had kindled in them the desire to live an especially simple and frugal —and somewhat solitary— life close to it, were characterized by a touching aesthetic sensibility, in harmony with the natural landscape. The scenes one encountered there evoked the times of our grandparents and great-grandparents, and created a condition that afforded and encouraged a type of authentic human contact that has all but vanished in our modern societies.
This more permanent “community” consisted of people of all ages (from young to elderly): some stayed for a few winters and then moved on, others stayed for some years, left and later came back, others stayed there permanently for decades. Their huts —the smallest of which were no larger than 6–7 square meters (and the rest only a few square meters larger)— were huts without owners: when a hut was vacant, anyone who wished could use it. The people who lived there made their living in various ways, some by working in the summer (one as a cook, another as a waiter, and so on) and others in the winter (as builders, as day labor to help the island’s older local residents with their errands, filling seasonal municipal positions, etc). This community, through its permanent presence, gradually transformed from a visitor into a guardian of this natural location and of the culture of freedom and respect that had grown up within it over the years: a handful of people who cleaned the beaches off the rubbish washed up by the sea throughout winter (as well as of the —fortunately few— traces of garbage left behind by summer visitors), who had distributed fire extinguishers throughout the forest so as to be able to respond instantly to any possible fire ignition in their home… These people were the “eyes of the forest” around the clock and throughout the year, and passed on their love and sensitivity to newer visitors.
The last point is perhaps the most important: without it implying they were perfect “saints”, or that they never had conflicts or made mistakes —nobody is perfect, after all, and the personality of all of us is always a work in progress— the people of this community, having consciously chosen to depart from the city and live for years in this unique condition, and having passed through decades of personal and interpersonal mounding and fermentation, offered to all of us who were fortunate enough to visit the island and spend time among them an invaluable opportunity to spend time in a condition of unparalleled beauty, authenticity, mutual respect, freedom, and tangible love for nature and for one’s fellow human being. A condition that was complemented and nourished by the rare quality of the people it attracted: sensitive people, musicians and artists, intellectuals, people with a passion for beauty and with vitality in their eyes, from every corner of the earth. It constituted a source not merely of oxygen, but of genuine culture and humanity.
On April 22nd 2026, this tiny community —this evolving experiment in genuine coexistence of human and nature, the success of which could be witnessed with one’s own eyes by those who in recent years had the fortune to spend even just a few days in Kedré— was demolished by a violent incursion of riot police and men with chainsaws, in an act that reminds of so many acts perpetrated by the “civilized” on the “uncivilized”. Forces sent there by people who haven’t slept a single night in this forest and for whom the sacredness of the junipers of Gavdos is an unknown concept —as William Blake once wrote: “The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way”. The State has decided to exercise its power to expel from a remote island with a tiny population that is aging and diminishing, a small community that was doing no harm but was tending the environment and supporting life on the island.
At a time when the shadows of war, poverty, and the collapse of the social fabric are darkening at an ever-accelerating pace —and while turning a blind eye to a countless multitude of illegal constructions built with concrete, and excavators which infringe on the natural environment — the Greek State, under the pretext of “legality” and the “protection of nature”, chose to destroy one of the last tiny loci of free expression and genuine coexistence of human and nature. It chose to demolish one of the last sources of humanity and genuine culture in Europe.
It is precisely the uniqueness of the condition that prevailed in Kedré that makes it difficult for someone who has not visited and lived a few days within the juniper forest of Lavrakas to grasp its true significance. This community is nothing less than a living, evolving example of a different way of life: it proposes a different way of valuing human existence, a different way of genuine coexistence of human and nature, and a different way of authentic human contact… three dimensions each of which cannot exist without the others. The erasure of this community will not only be yet another selective —and therefore unjust— application of “legality,” nor only yet another discrepancy between the letter and the spirit of the law (where a community that actively loved and safeguarded nature was uprooted under the pretext of protecting it, by a State that has shown interest only in exploiting it)… the erasure of this community, that is now fighting for its survival, will be the erasure of proof that a different world is possible.
In our modern societies, we have set out to destroy our own environment… to strip it of whatever has soul and beauty… to turn it into a commodity for consumption and sell it off to the highest bidder.
Let us finally wake up! Even now, five minutes before midnight, let us fight to save whatever is left to us. Let us fight so that one day our children too can have the chance to live a few moments of freedom beneath a starry sky, within pristine nature…
