Belonging(s)

Upon arriving on Hydra, photographer Stefan Dotter sets out to portray the island’s inhabitants through their personal belongings, seeking a material language that can identify the place and its people. Almost immediately, he encounters an impossible question: Who is a true Hydriot? Each person he meets holds a firm conviction about who belongs and who does not. Belonging emerges as a central theme in his project.

It becomes evident that Hydra exists as a field of competing realities, each fiercely protected. Overwhelmed by the insistence of diverging, often contradictory claims, Dotter attempts to construct his own definition of belonging by confronting the question, “Who really belongs?” only to arrive at a paradoxical conclusion: everybody and nobody. Belonging reveals itself  as fluid, contested, and perpetually renegotiated.

The resulting body of work takes the form of a visual essay composed of borrowed possessions: objects temporarily displaced from their owners and scattered across the island. Native plants coexist with discarded plastic byproducts, traces of human presence bleed into the landscape, and imported objects sit beside those originating on Hydra, all transformed through use, care, and time. Removed from their original contexts, these belongings resist clear attribution, mirroring the unsettled nature of identity itself.

In this misalignment of objects and places, BELONGING(S) proposes that belonging is inherently unstable and is continuously shaped by those who pass through, remain, or lay claim to the island.