Obsidian Collapse

A series of photographs shot on Milos and Sifnos, in the western Cyclades islands of Greece, explores a landscape of isolation, decay, and sudden ending. Strange architectural interventions, which exist somewhere between destruction and construction, respond to the struggles of life on sun-baked arid rocks in the sea.

Obsidian, a glossy black, extremely sharp volcanic rock cooled before its atoms can crystallize, once fueled these islands' economies as the primary weapon and tool making material for the entire ancient world. When the desire for obsidian was extinguished by the invention of bronze, a thriving civilization on these islands was abandoned.

Places like these, isolated geographically and unique geologically will innovate, erode, build up and break down millennia over millennia. In our current age of austerity, often described as sending cultures back to the Stone Age, we reflect on places like this and their successions of Obsidian Collapse.