Mitos Stories is a collection of visual narratives developed within the broader Mitos Project.
Each story unfolds through a sequence of images, grounded in specific places, people, and lived experiences across Greece. These are not isolated photographs, but fragments that gain meaning in relation to one another.
The work moves between documentation and construction. Real environments, personal histories, gestures, and symbols are brought together to form layered narratives where past and present coexist.
Tradition appears here not as folklore, but as something embodied, carried, and continuously reshaped.
Each story is a thread.
Together, they form a wider fabric of memory, identity, and continuity.
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“Roudama“
(The woman of life)
Rouda, 84 years old, is a member of the Pontic community in Acharnes, Attica.
Her name derives from “Roudama,” an older folk name connected to “roudi” -a word referring to the color red and, by extension, to life and blood.
Like many names in Pontic culture, it is preserved through oral tradition and functions as a carrier of identity and memory.
Rouda belongs to a generation that carries tradition through lived experience, expressed in everyday life, faith, and family bonds.
Great-granddaughters of Pontic Greek descent, photographed in traditional Pontic attire and contemporary clothing.
Between past and present, what is carried does not disappear -it transforms.
Father Ioannis, 87 years old, in the Church of Archangel Michael, built by his son.
He and his wife Maria, 83 years old, have 11 children, 26 grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandchild.
A quit continuity of faith, memory, and inheritance.
GREECE. Attica, Aspropyrgos. 2026.
Olga, 9 years old.
Between two worlds that do not collide, but continue within one another.
In traditional Pontic dress, she carries memory.
In judo, she carries discipline, strength, and a future.
She started at the age of four. To date: 18 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze medals.
At home, tradition is not a story. It is present.
Her father, Giorgos, 44, once a champion in Greco-Roman wrestling.
Today, he carries it forward.
Nothing is lost.
It simply changes form.
GREECE. Menidi, Attica. 2026.
In Pontic Greek communities, women’s hair has long functioned as a marker of identity and social position.
In traditional Pontic dress (19th – early 20th century), long hair is braided and covered with headscarves or adorned with headpieces, not to conceal it, but to signify age, marital status, and modesty.
Ethnographic records note that hairstyles differed between unmarried and married women, while the cutting of hair was reserved for exceptional circumstances -most often mourning or profound personal loss.
Hair was never merely decorative. It was biographical.
Following the displacement of Pontic Greeks and the population exchange of 1923, many of these practices were carried into Greece, surviving within communities as forms of embodied memory. Not as strict rules, but as continuities.
Today, among Pontic families in Menidi, Attica, long hair reappears as a conscious choice.
Not as a reconstruction of the past, but as an active connection to it.
In these images, hair is not a visual detail.
It is time, left uncut.
A thread that persists.
Mitos Stories| 2026
In Megara, the May Day custom of the “Mayides” remains a living part of local tradition, rooted in spring rituals associated with fertility, the renewal of nature, and the protection of the community. Today, the custom continues to be practiced, carrying its symbols and practices from one generation to the next.
Mitos Stories | 2026
In Greek tradition, bread is considered a sacred gift. It is the result of labor, earth, fire, and patience.
Before it enters the oven, many women make the sign of the cross over the dough, asking for protection and blessing for the home and the family.
The letters IX come from the name Jesus Christ and are carved into the bread like a silent prayer.
The cross also helps the bread open properly while baking, but beyond its practical purpose, it carries deep symbolism. It is a way of honoring the food before it becomes part of the family table.
In many villages across Greece, this gesture is passed down from generation to generation without many words. It is learned through practice. From the hands of mothers and grandmothers.
Perhaps this is where tradition truly lives.
In gestures repeated for centuries, not out of obligation, but out of memory.
Mitos Stories | 2026
“Money is Coming”
In Greek folk tradition, spilling coffee is considered a good omen and is often associated with incoming money or good news. This belief survives through oral traditions passed down across generations, where coffee was never seen as just a drink, but as part of daily ritual, hospitality, and social life.
In older Greek homes, especially in rural and island communities, a spilled cup of coffee was not always treated as an accident. Older people would often say, “money is coming,” turning an ordinary moment of disorder into a small sign of optimism.
Greek coffee carries deep cultural memory. From the traditional coffeehouse to the family kitchen, it has long been connected with conversation, waiting, storytelling, and ritual. Even today, these sayings remain alive as traces of Greece’s living folk tradition.
Mitos Stories | 2026
