Roadside shrines in the Peloponnese peninsula
In early September 2005, with Louisiana and Mississippi under watery siege back in the U.S., we were drifting, hollow-eyed and worried, around Greece. Turns out, Greece was a little hollow-eyed, as well.
Odd metal boxes perched on posts line the dusty, precarious roadsides of Greece’s southern mainland, the Peloponnese. Few are exactly the same size and shape, but most have little doors that allow you to see inside. Some contain letters, candles, or fake flowers, others what seem to be bits of trash and faded images of ikons. Most stand apart from civilization, sometimes in clusters, more often all alone.
At first I mistook them for art objects, akin to the dioramas I create. Each seemed dedicated to anything from Coca Cola to the Virgin Mary, a not-altogether bizarre pairing for an American sensibility.
