Teofil Mihăilescu

The album Athos. Architecture and sacred space published in 2014, in Romanian, English, French and German, received the Theodor Pallady Prize for Art Book at the International Book Fair Librex in Iași (2015) and was present at book fairs in Romania and abroad. The work presents all the Athonite monasteries, but also the Romanian hermitage of Saint John the Baptist (Prodromos), the port of Daphni, the capital Kareia and the border of the Athonite peninsula with the world. Taken between 2010-2014, the photos of this album-or otherwise looked as a history book, an architectural photography book and a personal confession, are a sum of frames-emotions that tell a story about the feeling of place, about the Byzantine architecture, about the sacred space in the context of the built universe of the Athonite world. It speaks equally, through silences of light, about the Athonite monastic life, about the nature of this World in the world, about the centuries-old contribution of the Romanian rulers to the building and decoration of the Athonite monasteries, about time and non-time beyond the physical or symbolical walls, about peace and quiet, about tolerance and love. In the album, more than 500 photos add up to one second of Athos Light as exposure times. This second of Light is given to you in a incredible imaginary pilgrimage that traverses the entire Holy Mountain and invites you in an equal manner to documentation, meditation and search for the meanings of our existence.

Foreword by Prof. Arch. Augustin Ioan, PhD
Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urban Planning, Bucharest
Review by Augustin Ioan, Atelier LiterNet/4SPACE, March 2014