CAMERA KALAUREIA

How can we find alternative, sensorially rich and affective ways of engaging with the material past in the present? How can photography play a central role in archaeological narratives, beyond representation and documentation? This photo-book engages with these questions, not through conventional academic discourse but through evocative creative practice. The book is, at the same time, a site guide of sorts: a photographic guide to the archaeological site of the Sanctuary of Poseidon in Kalaureia, on the island of Poros, in Greece. Ancient and not-so-ancient stones, pine trees that were “wounded” for their resin, people who lived amongst the classical ruins, and the tensions and the clashes with the archaeological apparatus and its regulations, all become palpable, affectively close and immediate. Furthermore, the book constitutes an indirect but concrete proposal for the adoption of archaeological photo-ethnography as a research as well as public communication tool for critical heritage studies, today.