Vanishing Greece

This stunning photographic essay on Greece is the result of a passionate love affair with the country conducted over twenty years by Clay Perry, a photographer whose books on English landscape, architecture, and gardens have been admired and successfully sold all over the world. During his many visits and travels in the country he has become aware that by the end of the century its landscape and traditional way of life may have changed irrevocably; this is his attempt to capture them even at this late date for posterity.
The book is introduced with a lyrical essay by Patrick Leigh Fermor, whose views on his adopted homeland exactly parallel those of Clay Perry. The rest is made up of 250 photographs, divided into seven regional chapters and complemented by a short text and extended captions by Elizabeth Boleman-Herring, another devoted philhellene who has lived in Greece for more than 30 years.
The principal subject matter of the photographs is the people of Greece, their traditional way of life, their homes, villages, day-to-day activities and festivals, as well as the haunting and varied landscape of the country itself, which includes 9,000 miles of coastline - the longest in Europe. The photographs reveal the fascinating geographical range that has helped shape the wonderfully diverse collection of communities and cultures of the country.
Vanishing Greece is an intimate portrait and a beautiful celebration of a country most tourists miss completely, a remarkable visual record of a nation in transition captured in words and pictures before it disappears altogether. It will stand as a book to treasure for those who know and love Greece, and to inspire those who are new to the land to visit it but respect its traditional ways.