Fitema Bridge, Ikaria — unknown photographer, late 1960s.

IKARIA, 1972–2026

Fifty Years Returning to the Same Greek Island

A family archive, a black-and-white exhibition, and 46 years of photography on an island that never really left me.

In July 1972, we left Paris before dawn — on the 14th of July — in a Citroën Méhari. The journey would take a full week: across Italy, then through Yugoslavia and its landscapes, then Greece, Athens, and finally the port where the boat for Ikaria was waiting. After several hours at sea, on a vessel quite different from the ones that make the crossing today, we arrived at night in Agios Kirikos, at the far end of the island — at the time, the only port where vehicles could be loaded on and off.

I was young, and I had no idea that the journey would shape the rest of my life.

The island was Ikaria.

My grandmother, Athina, had been born there in 1904, in the small mountain village of Fitema. Like many islanders of her generation, she left Ikaria in the 1920s and eventually settled in France. Long before I took my first photograph on the island, Ikaria was already part of my family’s story.

That first trip was not a photographic expedition. It was simply a return to a place I had never really known but somehow already belonged to.

Eight years later, in 1980, I began photographing it.

I never stopped.

Nikos, Fitema, Early 1980s

An Island That Refuses to Hurry

Many people know Ikaria today because it is considered one of the world’s “Blue Zones,” places where an unusually high number of people live into their nineties and beyond.

Scientists have studied the island for years. They have looked at diet, wine, olive oil, mountain herbs, afternoon naps, social life and countless other factors in search of the secret of longevity. According to legend, the island even takes its name from Icarus, who fell into the sea nearby after flying too close to the sun — a myth that fits an island shaped, for centuries, by isolation and a stubborn will to keep going.

Perhaps the scientists are all partly right.

But none of those explanations tell the whole story.

The reason I kept returning had little to do with statistics.

It was the light.

The landscape.

The people.

The feeling that life still moved at a human pace.

Over the years, the island changed. Roads improved. Cars became more numerous. Mobile phones arrived. The internet arrived. Today, even 5G reaches villages that once felt isolated from the rest of the world.

And yet something essential remains unchanged.

Ikaria still follows its own rhythm.

Photographing Without a Plan

When I began photographing seriously in the early 1980s, I was not building a project.

I wasn’t documenting a disappearing culture.

I wasn’t thinking about books, exhibitions or archives.

I simply photographed the things around me.

Friends.

Village festivals.

Harbours.

Fishermen.

Family gatherings.

Small moments of everyday life.

The kind of moments that seem ordinary when they happen.

The kind that become precious decades later.

Year after year, I returned to the same villages.

The same cafés.

The same squares.

Sometimes I photographed the same people twenty or thirty years apart without realizing what those images would one day mean.

The photographs accumulated quietly.

Only much later did I understand that I had created something larger than a collection of pictures.

I had created a personal archive of time.

Two Archives, One Island

This summer, those photographs come together in an exhibition called IKARIA 1972–2026, presented in Evdilos on the north coast of the island.

The exhibition combines two distinct archives.

The first consists of seven historical photographs from my family collection and other archival sources. Some date back to the 1950s and 1960s, before I ever arrived on the island — among them, an image documenting the first liturgy held at the small church of Agios Charalampos in Evdilos, a moment from an Ikaria I never knew but that shaped the one I did.

The First Liturgy, Agios Charalampos Church — Evdilos, Early 1960s

The second archive consists of forty-four photographs I made between 1980 and 2026.

Placed side by side, these images span nearly three generations.

Together they tell a story that is both personal and collective.

The story of a family.

The story of a village.

The story of an island.

Why Black and White?

Every photograph in the exhibition is presented in black and white.

Greek islands are often associated with colour: blue skies, whitewashed houses and postcard-perfect seas.

But colour can sometimes distract as much as it reveals.

Black and white simplifies.

It removes the obvious.

It focuses attention on light, form, gesture and expression.

It encourages us to look more carefully.

Light Over Ikaria, 2025

For me, black and white has always felt closer to memory itself.

Less descriptive.

More emotional.

More timeless.

The People Behind the Landscape

Landscape alone cannot tell the story of Ikaria.

What gives the island its character is its people.

Many of the faces appearing in these photographs belong to friends I have known for decades.

Some are no longer alive.

Others I still meet each summer.

Together they form a portrait of an island community seen across nearly half a century.

Giannis, Evdilos, 2024

Looking at these photographs today, I am often reminded that the true subject was never the landscape.

It was always the people who inhabited it.

A Book Born From the Exhibition

Alongside the exhibition, I have produced a small photographic book bringing together all 51 images shown on the walls.

The book includes captions in English, French and Greek and serves as both a companion to the exhibition and a record of the project itself.

It is not intended as a definitive history of Ikaria.

Nor is it a comprehensive photographic survey.

It is simply a personal journey through time, told through images collected over decades of returning to the same place.

Why Now?

People often ask why I decided to organise this exhibition in 2026.

The answer is simple.

It took time.

Time to gather the archive.

Time to revisit thousands of negatives and digital files.

Time to choose what belonged together and what did not.

And perhaps most importantly, time to understand what these photographs were really about.

They were never about photography alone.

They were about memory.

About attachment.

About returning.

An Invitation

From July 14 through early September 2026, IKARIA 1972–2026 will be presented at Koralli Restaurant in Evdilos.

Ten large-format aluminium prints will form the heart of the exhibition, accompanied by smaller prints and the photographic book.

Visitors will have the opportunity to view the work, purchase prints and discover the stories behind the photographs.

If you happen to be on Ikaria this summer, I hope you will stop by. You can find the event details and updates here: facebook.com/events

And if you cannot make the journey, the photographs, the book and the continuing story of this project can be found at:

**www.jeanzaf.com**

Some places give us memories.

A few shape the way we see the world.

For more than fifty years, Ikaria has done both.

And this exhibition is my way of saying thank you.

Jean Zaf

Photographer based between Paris and Ikaria, Greece.