FRIENDS OF MOUNT ATHOS BOOK REVIEWS

© 1994

Athonikes Stigmes. Mount Athos: Monastery of Philotheou, 1994. 206 pages. About 250 plates. ISBN 960-85453-0-7. Also available in a bilingual (English and German) edition.

Athonikes Stigmes represents a selection from the photographic record of life on the Holy Mountain built up over a period of years by a monk of Philotheou. Apart from a single-page Prologue, the book consists of around 250 photographs, mainly in colour; most have a very brief identificatory caption, but the intention is to let the pictures speak for themselves without the distraction of explanatory text.

The arrangement of the book is one of its principal pleasures. There is no rigid division into sections, but the groups of photographs showing the buildings of individual monasteries and sketes are interspersed with other images, again often in short sequences. Some show recent major events in the life of the Mountain, such as the fire in August 1990 (pp. 40-1), but most are timeless, such as the Easter liturgical sequence (pp. 138-44). Among the most successful of these sequences is that of the winter funeral (pp. 200-3), which finally comes to rest on the anonymous black bundle of the body in the grave, already dusted with a covering of snow.

The use of contrast is important. Thus, several pages of the pomp and formality of patriarchal visitations (pp. 20-7) are followed by three very simple pictures of black-clad figures going about their routine business in Karyes. The fire sequence, with its sense of bustle and impending doom, follows pictures of a waterfall and precedes three treescapes, the juxtaposition providing a more eloquent commentary on the fragile beauty of the natural environment than any extended caption could do. Two pages (198-9) showing the reception of neophytes into the church are followed immediately by the funeral scenes of monks taking their leave of a deceased brother. Sometimes a single striking image without a caption serves as a punctuation mark, indicating a change of rhythm or place, such as the crowded trailer seen from above (p. 75).

Within individual pictures, juxtapositions are likewise important: the huge physical presence of the rocks dwarfing tiny buildings (pp. 98, 100), the ever-present contrast between light and dark in interior scenes, the koala bear on the wall next to the door through which an elderly monk is about to pass (p. 81), the simple washing facilities set against a wooded panorama (p. 49), the human skull among the domestic impedimenta in the cellar of a hermitage (p. 176).

Beautiful though many of the formal landscape photographs are, the book's originality lies in the insight that it gives into a daily life that has not been taken over by the demands of the twentieth century - nor eased by twentieth-century conveniences. Solitary contemplation or timeless ritual in church has its counterpoint in hard physical labour. Many of the photographs of monks at work suggest a momentary glimpse caught by an observer in passing: the view from above of the group, sleeves rolled up, preparing fish in the open air, wielding their choppers and scrapers on huge wooden blocks (p. 151) or the working party fixing a trio of window frames (p. 168). Contrasted with these are carefully posed portraits of named monks or groups of monks.

The technical quality of the photographs in Athonikes Stigmes is generally high, but even the less accomplished have something to offer in building up the overall picture of Athonite life. The black and white picture of the young monk in the cave of St Niphon (p. 105), for instance, seems at first sight scarcely to warrant a page to itselself on grounds of artistic merit; but as the eye lingers on it, the cross in his right hand is gradually revealed in the light of the candle he holds, resolving the whole into a memorable icon of the ascetic life. The book avoids with some skill the obvious pitfalls of a touristic album of scenic or folksy pictures, but nor does it attempt a full documentary-style coverage. In maintaining its idiosyncratic middle way it encourages an imaginative response to the Athonite experience.

JENNIFER DRAKE-BROCKMAN

Oxford