This was the most difficult photograph to identify from the set of old images of Vlach villages by the Manakia brothers. Typically, the outline of the landscape or a surviving building – usually a church – provided clues to help me identify the village in the photographs. But in this case, the shape of the mountains wasn’t visible – this was the only photograph of its kind – and the image showed only houses, likely long gone. There was, however, a clue in the photograph: the architecture of the houses, which resembled that of the nearby settlement of Nimphaio, known as Nevesca in Vlach, a blend of Balkan-Ottoman architecture with European, Venetian details.
Somehow, intuition led me to Pisoderi, near the Vigla Pass, the very area where the Vlachs were first recorded in history in Byzantine chronicles. Once there, however, nothing was recognizable. So, perhaps it wasn’t Pisoderi after all… After two hours of wandering through the village and the surrounding hills, trying to find a remotely similar perspective, I gave up and went to the local tavern. The owner, not originally from the area, suggested we wait until evening when the village elders would gather for a glass of tzipuro, and talk to them. It wasn’t necessary; from a nearby table, a man stood up, glanced at the old photograph, and said: I was born in that house! It was the last house of old Pisoderi, which had survived nearly to the present day but burned down in 2014. The man, Kosmas Roufos, a wine specialist, passed through his village only once a year on his way to Corfu, stopping briefly for a coffee. We just happened to cross paths…
I returned to Pisoderi in March 2025, hoping to better match the framing of the original photograph. The perspective captured by the Manakia brothers was unusual, completely lacking any trace of sky, almost a bird’s-eye view. How could that be? In my new photo, the site of the house that had burnt down nine years earlier is clearly visible; the trees are bare, with traces of the fire still remaining. Yet even then, I couldn’t replicate the brothers’ exact framing. Only after returning home did it strike me: the original photo was most likely taken from the balcony of the imposing Greek school that once stood above the village. Which means… I’ll need to make yet another trip to Pisoderi.
