Alexandros Earth Art

From a young age, I felt boundless admiration for the beauty of nature and its unexpected variety of shapes, forms, and colors. At the same time I loved exploring it. It is no surprise that I eventually became a biologist and oceanographer. I could have become a geologist or astronomer because of my love for minerals and the universe, respectively. I have been involved in both of these sciences as an amateur for many years. My whole life is connected to scientific research and I have been studying marine animals and especially cetaceans (i.e., dolphins, porpoises, and whales) for the last 35+ years.

My first encounter with the minerals was with the ones of Lavrion, Greece and took place during my teenage years. A family friend who had seen me collecting stones with unusual shapes and colors gave me a small collection of minerals from Lavrion as a gift. A little later, while visiting Lavrion, I noticed a tunnel along the way and my instinct for exploration was piqued. I begged my uncle, who was originally from Lavrion, to take me there, but he refused categorically. Decades later, thanks to some local people and with a delay of about 35 years, I fulfilled my teenage dream with my first thrilling descent into the central gallery of Kamariza. Since then, the joy of exploring, mapping the tunnels, and searching for minerals has lasted for years. A new world of high aesthetics had opened up before me and it was not limited to the macroscopic level. The "microcosm" of the minerals of the Lavrion region concealed even more beauty and a promising field for me to try to reveal through photomicrography.

From the depths of the sea to the depths of the earth, but also in the deep sky of our universe, there is an incredible aesthetic of colors and shapes everywhere, where macrophotography, photomicroscopy, and astrophotography have given me the most beautiful journeys of my life. I hope and wish that other people can feel what I felt on these journeys. Perhaps, in the end, love for the beauty of nature is our last hope for quickly reversing our species' destructive frenzy towards the paradise we are fortunate enough to live in.