"Did you know that the best church bells are cast in Russia? While in Greece, one project my team and I had was to document churches that were at risk of destruction due to a decimating earthquake in 1953. Traveling from church to church around the island of Kefalonia, we had noticed that all the bells we saw were imprinted with Russian characters. It wasn’t until a man told us his personal account with his local church that we learned about the Russian bells. He recounted stories of being on the island during the earthquake as a young boy and coming back to his childhood home, and rebuilt church, after many years. His story brought an immensely helpful perspective to our work and answers to questions we had been tackling.

The Greek community we were immersing ourselves in was deeply religious, and the churches my team and I were documenting and mapping served as a cornerstone of their local culture. Preserving these churches, threatened by decay and urban development, meant conserving a foundational element of these people’s lives.

It became clear very quickly how important and impactful our work was for the society. And it was amazing to see how people reached out to us and helped in ways we couldn’t imagine. Priests brought us water and snacks and connected us with more churches. Neighbors offered lawns and even their homes for us to get the perfectly angled picture. And the passer-by, telling us a story about a bell."