ATHENS

We came to Athens for a photography festival that was closed the days we were there; the first disorientation, before the city supplied its own. Underfoot, the pavements were badly finished, pulling attention down as often as out. The pace was unhurried in a way I recognised from home, out of step with the rest of the northern countries. The temple on the hill held its place as a fixed reference; everything below it, shopfronts, bookshops, graffiti, trees, cats folded into whatever shade they found, repeated itself into a kind of sameness that disoriented more than any single sight could. My husband appears in some of these frames, present but unnamed, the way anyone here is allowed to be. Not everything in this set was made in a haze, some of it is resolved, made in the moments Athens still let me see clearly. Both belong to the same walk.