Pomaks. The nomadic-excluded nomads
At the northerneastern part of Greece, Bulgaria, and mainly northwestern Turkey is located an ethnic group generally called as Pomaks. They speak various Bulgarian dialects and those spoken in Greece and Turkey are referred to as the Pomak language. The community in Greece is commonly fluent in Greek. Pomaks are today usually considered descendants of Orthodox Bulgarians who converted to Islam during the Ottoman rule of the Balkans. They started to become Muslim gradually, from the Ottoman occupation (early 15th century) to the end of the 18th century. The 20th century finds the Pomaks scattered in the Balkans, without a single national identity. The Pomaks in Greece make up 34% of the total Muslim minority in Thrace, while in the prefecture of Xanthi it is estimated that they exceed 60%. The decision of the Metaxa government in 1936 to exclude their area by banning them from leaving and entering the villages, contributed to isolation and social and economic marginalization. At the same time, because of their Slavic language and the belief that they were Islamized Bulgarians, they were considered particularly dangerous to the security of the country, in the context of the alleged influence that communist Bulgaria might have had on them. In addition, the trilingualism that was institutionally imposed on Pomak students through minority education contributed to the devaluation of the mother tongue. The photographic project aims to reach the places of the Pomaks. "Excluded" in a perpetual, constant and timeless movement, they have made their own places. Can these places tell the story of movement? Over the centuries the Pomaks often found themselves between different languages, religions, traditions, political choices. Over the last five decades their folklore culture has undergone significant changes and many customs have been abandoned or mutated. To this day, they are still a misunderstood population group, which within the geographical boundaries of the Greek state seeks its national identity and from time to time faces different policies. While in the past they were often confronted with ideological and spatial movements, at the present time they are facing yet another movement: to the nearby urban centers (Xanthi, Komotini), but also mainly to Europe. Hopefully the shooting process managed to keep the photographer's questions and thoughts on the life of Pomaks. Moreover the photographer's view tried to act as a compass, and not as a binding command for the viewer. After all the more one deals with photography, the more one realizes that this is, among all the other means of artistic expression, the most vague and elusive, but perhaps the most charming one.