Aeiforia is a Greek word for defining progress based on the use of natural ecosystems and energy sources to ensure future resources. This project was commissioned by the World Photography Organisation and was a winning series of Sony World Photography Awards 2020 under the theme Sustainability Now.

In an era of climate change and challenges around sustainability, islands are particularly vulnerable. Insular by their very nature, these land masses usually depend on fossil fuels and imports for energy (despite the high transportation costs). Until a few years ago, the idea of an island being fully reliant on clean energy was almost unthinkable, and yet it is about to become a reality on Tilos in Greece.

This tiny island in the Dodecanese archipelago is the first in the Mediterranean to run almost entirely on renewable energy. Over the years it has received energy from a diesel power plant on the neighbouring island of Kos, via an undersea cable, but during the tourist season this has proven unreliable, leading to frequent power cuts. Since 2015, however, the supply on Tilos has been reinforced with a hybrid system exclusively powered by renewable sources including solar power, wind turbines and battery farms.

My images are taken in the island’s capital, Megálo Chorió, where only 70 inhabitants live during the winter, and where the tiny island passages are smoothly lighten only by raw moonlight at night, making the limestone rooftops and yards of the islanders’ houses my playground for documenting all types of solar panels and energy devices used, sometimes handmade or fixed with simple materials, to keep them running the longest possible as they are one of the main sources of energy for sustaining their households throughout the winter.

In the series, I am interested in how those strangely shaped devices and wires become an organic part of the night scenery as the darkness falls and they orchestrate a vivid ambience with their composition in a harmonic symbiosis with the dry nature and mountainous landscape of Tilos.