Family Photos

Platia Eleftheriou Venizelou, Voula, Greece

I may have made a strategic mistake…

On principal, I’m not a big fan of the posed tourist photo. One reason is that it’s mostly, it’s me with the camera (and trust me, it’s hard to give it up sometimes), but mostly because I find that genre to be on the continuum that includes, on the far end, use of a selfie stick. The result is that we don’t have nearly as many family photos as we might deserve.

But every once in a while we bite, and the results look sort of like this.

It’s a particularly brilliant photo, which I can say because I didn’t take it. The important (and interesting) stuff in the foreground is nicely focused and we, in the back, are nicely fuzzy. We, the subject matter, are almost an afterthought. It’s not what the family wants to see, but perhaps (just maybe), it’s something that friends might take a casual look at and say “cool!”, before moving on.

It also captures my favourite time of the day, early evening, civil twilight.

“Platia” means beach in Greek. Venizelou was the Greek Prime Minister in the early 20th century, and is considered to be one of the “makers” (a weird Greek translation) of the modern Greek state. He was a revolutionary, a rebel, and in later years, a Liberal. He grew Greece’s area by invasion and annexation. He won wars and lost wars, attempted coups, and lost.

This beach, and many main streets throughout Greece are named after him, an imperfect hero. Not like our own General Brock at all, but such is Greek history.

So here’s some history to accompany a family photo taken about ten months ago, when Greece was a different, more peaceful country.