On the rural outskirts of the Greek capital, we become lost in a parallel world - landscapes of timeless nature, patient silence and the whispers of a new direction.

The area that surrounds Athens is composed by certain antitheses: the vast urban surface meets with the countryside. Surrounded by the silence of centenarian olive groves, meadows, mountains and seas, the city today struggles to carry the weight of its own existence, facing a tough and tense present. This is a prolonged silence that seems to surround the loud and desperate cry that comes out of the capital's heart.

Photographer Petros Koublis, then, made a project outside less than 30 miles away from the heart of the capital where area surrounds the depressed city and all the millions of its citizens' individual stories.

With more than 4 million people living today in Athens' metropolitan area, the city offers a controversial image: a challenging reality in which every day, an increasing number of people have to face further difficulties.

However, outside the invisible borders of the extended metropolitan area, in the land that lies past the edge of the city, time seems to move parallel but in a different density. There is an inevitable contrast between the two states, a parable manifested by the discreet mystery that trees seem to hide among their branches and seas among their waves. This is an alternate state in parallel time, where silence seems to carry inside it a waiting, patiently whispering a long forgotten language.

"I worked on a series of images that were aiming to express this undefined, mystical presence that wanders around these areas, a lost connection between us and a beauty that regardless of its obvious magnificence it always remains far, strange and unfamiliar, hidden behind an unreasonable mystery." said photographer Petros Koublis, "For it's not only nature, eventually it is beauty itself that has lost its intimate character, overtaken by the values of an artificial illusion that's reflected through our collapsing cities."

There is no eternal beauty but the eternity of nature that can reflect a new direction, maybe even a hope. It's not a blissful silence but it's an inspiring one.

(All images copyrighted Petros Koublis)

>> Gallery: In Landscapes: Alternate States in Parallel Time I & II

>> Photographer: Petros Koublis