It was such an August day in 1965. Small children were playing ball on the field in Kasos when they saw the figure of a tall, slender young man in sandals and with a camera around his neck, looking in vain for the path that would lead him to the Acropolis of Kasos, the famous Castle in Polly. He asked them for help, and some of them were dear to him. They stopped the game and took him upstairs. To please them, he made them pose for the camera. Fifty-seven years later, some of the story’s main characters were reunited at a particularly touching event held on August 11 at Fry’s Elementary School for the launch of the photo album Letter from Casso, 1965.

At the time, the boy, Ilias Mastropavlos, now head of the Municipal Corporation of the Municipality of Kasos, was one of the children who volunteered to accompany photographer Robert McCabe. The American, in turn, remains tall, thin and agile, as he was in his youth, but his hair has turned gray. Not too long ago, Pataki Publications published a book with dozens of his pictures of the island and its inhabitants, which were taken at the time but have been on the shelf for decades. Their use required overcoming a serious obstacle: to find those who recognize the faces in the photographs after so many years. This difficult task was undertaken by representatives of the Kassiotis diaspora, Marilene Fragoulis-Kedrou, and a native of the island, journalist Nikos Mastropavlos, cousin of Ilias. Thus ended the book. Were identified all appeared from the first to the last.

Thanks to the album, the thread of luck that connected McCabe with the locals brought him back to the same people. Like those little girls who danced hand in hand and the American immortalized them in one of the most beautiful images in the book, or those who then danced at the festival on August 15th. The photographer saw them again, their children or even grandchildren during his current visit. This is the established summer meeting, which is the best occasion for uniting the “alienated” from Athens and abroad with their own. The welcome given to McCabe was so warm, as if he, too, was their relative, whom they saw for 57 years and finally returned to their homeland.

Since 1954, when he first came to our country as a student, McCabe, honorably granted Greek citizenship, has seen places and places decay and lose their soul. But not in Kasos, which hasn’t changed much since the pre-tourism era. The sense of community that the Kasiotes have remains unchanged, something that was irretrievably lost in Mykonos and Santorini, to which the photographer dedicated books. During the few days that McCabe was there, the locals stopped him on the street to talk to him, constantly brought him goodies and local products, touched him with their kind words and compliments. The black-and-white photography event was a huge success because it stirred up memories of the past that are miraculously still fresh.