Seventeen Trees On A Chapel
A small stone church near Vasta, Arcadia, carrying seventeen mature trees on its roof.
On 9 September 2012 I visited Agia Theodora near Vasta, outside Megalopoli. The building is tiny. The first thing it asks you to explain is how it is still standing.
Seventeen mature trees grow from its stone roof. Their trunks look wildly out of scale with the chapel carrying them. Water runs through the ravine beside it. The whole thing appears to have negotiated its own rules.
Local tradition sees a miracle. An engineer starts thinking about roots, load paths, moisture and stone. I was studying physics, so naturally my head went there too. Curiosity only made the place stranger.
I kept walking around it and photographing the roof from different angles. The camera roll makes the obsession obvious. I was clearly trying to make the geometry confess.
Stone, water, roots, shade, flame and people quietly circling: the whole place behaves like a small living system. My five photographs span twenty-three minutes. I spent most of them trying to understand the roof.
I remember taking extra care with the final candle photograph. It deserved the effort.