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(homage to Jules Verne)

In the classic book of Jules Verne: A Journey to the Centre of the Earth (French: Voyage au centre de la Terre) published in 1864, Professor Otto Lidenbrock having discovered a runic note written by the alchemist Arne Saknussemm sets off together with his (rather reluctant) nephew Axel on a voyage to the center of the earth. Descending in one of the craters of the volcano Snæfellsjökull of Iceland and following the volcanic tube they come across a series of hardships and at one point an amazing universe of unmatched imagination is revealed: a vast cavern with prehistoric animals and plants: gigantic mushrooms, petrified trees, giant insects, dinosaurs and mastodons.

Here, a small part of the vegetation in the area between Ano Hora and Kato Hora in Oreini (meaning “mountainous”) Nafpaktia, Aitoloakarnania, Greece. The assortment of mushrooms, mosses, lichens and plants we came across often made me think of the imaginary pictures of the book. Here, I tried to capture a photo that refers to the masterpiece of Jules Verne: if scale was forgotten and the minute was thought of as gigantic, the free mind would not be surprised to find the Ichthyosaurus fighting with the Plesiosaurus (a “classic” scene from the book) in the next pond the walker comes across…

Hence, this photograph is a small homage to Jules Verne, a great writer whose gigantic imagination and vivid storytelling created a series of masterpieces that have accompanied the childhood years of many persons boosting creative thinking and imagination.