Photographer Anthi Kollia is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the project ‘Picnic at Schinos, 2021’. To see Anthi’s body of work, click on any photograph.

In 2021, after a great fire swept through Schinos, I found myself standing in a bare landscape, stripped of life.

It was there that Picnic at Schinos was born. A family of friends agreed to join me in this desolate place, to lay out a tablecloth and share a picnic while wearing gas masks.

I am not certain whether this is a scene of intimacy or estrangement, a ritual of memory or a fleeting act of resistance. The images remain motionless, silent, withholding answers, offering no assurances.

Perhaps the masks protect, perhaps they only estrange us further. The question drifts unresolved, hovering somewhere between memory and awakening – or dissolving into nothing at all.

What rises to the surface is the presence of the moment itself: the stillness, the silence, the gaze caught behind the glass of the mask, the ground that seems to smolder even now.

And within this uncertainty, a small, insistent spark of life endures.

Bio

Anthi Kollia, born in Toronto, Canada, was raised -and continues to live- in Athens, Greece. She studied Political Science and Public Administration at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

Her journey in photography began as an amateur in 1997, gradually evolving into a more focused and active engagement from 2019 onwards. Since then, she has participated in numerous group exhibitions and has received honorary distinctions and awards in both national and international photography competitions. In May 2025, she presented her first solo exhibition, REONTA SOMATA (BODIES IN FLOW), at IFocus Gallery (May 17–23), followed by a presentation of the same work at Moschouleios School in Tinos (July 25–30, curated by Dora Lavazou).

In 2024, following entrance examinations, she commenced her studies at the Department of Photography and Audiovisual Arts at the University of West Attica.

All images and text © Anthi Kollia