Socotra is a visual journey to an island somewhere faraway under the countless stars of the tropical sky and secluded in dangerous waters. The photographs promise adventure on an isle beleaguered by pirates in search for ships to seize. It explores a place that is luscious and murderous, overgrown with otherworldly plants, inhabited by natives and ruled by sheikhs.

Islands have never been just “a piece of land surrounded by water” (Oxford Dictionary). Rather, the word was always loaded with notions of how these places look and feel and the myths tied around them. Men were driven by their imagination to discover and explore and we have come to see islands through the prism offered by the accounts, genuine or fictionalised, of adventurers and seafarer who went out to search, conquer, and colonise.

Socotra asks questions about the history of adventure and exploration. It is a book not only about the real island Socotra – but also about the cultural tradition and the myths and clichés tied to the idea of island in our minds. It will get published in September 2011 as an artist’s book.