Odysseas Tsompanoglou

2026

Printmaking Photographic

Experience Place Space

Keywords: Transit, Deterritorialization, Mythology

South of No North begins with a familiar yet hopeful impulse: the desire to escape modern life by seeking refuge in a place that appears “untouched.” Set on Ogygia, an island completely forgotten by the wider world at the southernmost point of Europe—an transit route and a place of the “self expelled”, home to one of the oldest self-built hippie communities, and the place where Odysseas stayed with the nymph Calypso for seven years—the project reveals a more complex reality: refugee pushbacks, militarization, early-stage gentrification, and ecological change are already taking place. Refugees arriving by boat dissolve into rumors and “the unknown,” while threats of disappearance and uncertainty arise within a community built to exist by deterritorialization in the absence of a state or regulated laws.

The sea, once an agent of protection from the outside world, is now an entity of punishment, forming an invincible barrier of neglect. In South of no North, I navigate among roles such as documentarian, explorer, storyteller, and artist, seeking to develop a critical methodology for examining systems of control and commodification.

Through black-and-white film, instant photographs, digital images, local rumor, and diary-like text, I approach the island as both a real locality and a space of fantasy, where time becomes a condition and where roles are in ongoing flux. It is

In this research project, I engage with the realities of Ogygia, in the empirical present as well as its mythological existence, through photography with honesty and room for speculation.

The landscape feels lunar—vast, empty, and bathed in an almost otherworldly light. The sand is a deep, striking gold. With so few trees around to break the horizon, the scene feels stripped down to its essentials, making it unique compared to most other beaches. We met some young people, who gave us opium and weed. I felt dizzy and started moving around. Everything looked amazingly smooth. It was one of the times in my life when my camera was urgent for my well-being. I took countless portraits of the rocks by the sea, driven by an instinct I couldn't quite name. I had completely surrendered control to the process. Writing this down now, I realize this might be the only honest way to photograph here. If I try to force my own narrative onto this place, I am just extracting from it, turning the island into another cheap spectacle. But by letting the landscape use me as a tool, I can finally map this space more respectfully.

Over the last two days, I started feeling more exhausted. The humidity from the rains made the climate harsher, and headaches became common. The terrain is always wet, especially in early mornings. I am waiting for the sun to come in order to dry some sand around me. I slept the last few days in Talos because Hank does not feel ready to follow the path for Kambai, and I haven’t seen Pavlos or his girlfriend. Those who manage to stay here all year round amaze me. Especially when there is a storm or strong winds, I find it very harsh and challenging. The people I meet possess a quiet certainty in their movements; they know exactly what to do and where to go, with an amazing simplicity in their actions.

Today, Hank and I took the path of Plagia. We found a farmer who gave us a ride in the back of his truck down to Lia, a small coastal area with just five houses and two closed tavernas. From Lia, we took a dirt path on foot. As we walked, I kept spotting pieces of clothing tangled in the trees and thorny bushes along the trail. It was an incredibly eerie landscape. The air felt suﬀocatingly heavy. You could palpably feel the recent presence of people—people exactly like you—sweating and pushing through this exact brush, yet there was absolutely no one in sight.

Yesterday, I finally sat with the Pythagorians in their house, drinking vodka and talking.

Ifigenios has the same opinion as I: the energy here is very intense and not in a good way, particularly. He moved to the island during the COVID pandemic, like many others, because here there was no quarantine: everything was functioning, and you didn’t have to send an sms to go out. He has lived all these years in a small room in Koros without electricity, and he works for the local municipality, fixing buildings and infrastructure. He told me emphatically that here, all the problems become bigger and bigger. I see that. Almost everyone is fighting everyone, while there is nothing to separate.

At night, the place becomes harsher, more eerie; the wind intensifies, and beyond the wind, there is almost nothing visible except the stars. Only with my flash can I imagine what things look like.

We ran into him in Posi, and then we went together to the Haran, a small semi- autonomous canteen with a big mural of Bob Marley on it, which runs like a squatted place (you go yourself to take a beer from inside and you leave the money on a table). There, I saw Alex devastated: He told me they forced him to leave the island. Perhaps they are right, not because he is an unpredictable person but because he made some stupid decisions: personally, because I remembered him from the summer, when he passed me a bottle with LSD inside without telling me anything about it, I believe that it is not crazy to assume that he did the same with the Norwegian and also yesterday they caught him on a camera stealing a bag from a group of people that he was serving (he told me that he thought the bag was mine, but I don’t trust him on that

Everything has been torn down, destroyed. A scene of special forces walking between sand cliﬀs in the middle of nowhere could be a sketch from Monty Python. But here life overcomes the fantasy. A state can remain a state when it acts under control, and so a place that remains in its shadow turns into one of its biggest enemies. Ogygia entered history very fast and violently as part of a societal structure that apparently doesn’t have the right to exist. As the capital needs its expansion, profit needs to find its way to exceed itself. The economy is the tool against the people, the structure that needs everything to be exploited because its only meaning of existence depends on that.

I was happy I didn’t write anything in this textbook. This means I was there, experiencing things. Sometimes reflection is good to happen, but when I reflect, I feel I don’t experience things. When I am in the moment, I don’t feel the need to question what I am feeling: I just feel it. The highlight of the last few days was the photography walk with Miki. He showed me two incredibly massive cedar trees and a few ancient Roman graves, which were carved directly into the earth like deep, hollowed-out caves. I took some Polaroids of him standing next to the trees in a pose he chose himself, and the whole interaction felt incredibly natural. I am finally starting to let go of the anxiety I had about taking portraits of the people here. From now on, I feel I can just shoot Polaroids when the moment arises naturally, completely free of pressure.

After three hours of walking, we finally reached Plagia. Everything there was fucked. It was completely diﬀerent from how it was three years ago. I counted around fifteen old wooden boats dragged up onto the beach—vessels so rotting and fragile they would easily sink in a 3-beaufort wind. The sand was scarred with the black ashes of hurried fires. There were piles of abandoned clothes, scattered petrol barrels, and an overwhelming, physical smell of dysphoria and diesel baking in the dirt. It was forty degrees, and the sun was blindingly bright. I just stood there, completely shocked. Two weird guys came to us after a while and started asking us questions. They asked me why I photograph, where I am from, and why I am here. I said I am a tourist and I wanted to visit this place because I saw it on the map. After a while, they left us alone. Hank and I stayed under a tree, faking that we were reading a book. When we thought time had passed, we started walking fast through another path that would lead us to Europia. We wanted to make the safest option because they might wait for us back in Lia.

When he left, we remained there drinking. Justin started opening up with me, maybe it was the alcohol, or his love for Hank, but suddenly, I started understanding him in a way. He told me he came here because it was the easiest way to avoid the police and to be safe somewhere where no one would ask questions.

Everything this morning feels washed away. The flies here have been out of control; they do not let you relax, not even for a second. I remember Hank telling me that when the island gets frustrated, more flies appear—it is the island's way of kicking people out, he said. I don’t know. I tend to look at it more practically. I think it is simply because of the humidity and the food people leave behind.