A GREEK IDYLL

Haute Bohemians: Greece
by Miguel Flores-Vianna (Vendome)

Creative people seem to always have a favorite place and a favorite muse. They are mainstays to which an artist continually returns, actually and spiritually. For photographer Miguel Flores-Vianna, who has been everywhere in the world and has met, seemingly, everyone worth meeting in it, “Greece has been a constant part of the rhythm of my life.” In his new book, Haute Bohemians: Greece (Vendome), the Argentine-born Flores-Vianna writes of his ongoing travels to the southernmost country in Europe: “My love for this land is profound—this land which welcomes me every summer making me feel that I am one of its own.”

In his introduction, Flores-Vianna, a contributing photographer for MILIEU, honors the memory of a late friend and colleague who continues to be a living presence for him. Min Hogg, longtime editor of The World of Interiors, not only commissioned him to photograph homes around the world, but she taught him ways to see the world. While visiting Hogg in the Canary Islands, where she had a home on Gran Canaria (and which MILIEU featured in articles in Fall 2017), Flores-Vianna was taken by Hogg to see what she claimed were the island’s best residences. She took him first, surprisingly, to the home of her housekeeper, a simple abode whose interiors were “devoid of much adornment” but whose “rooms felt balanced, peaceful, and devoid of superfluity.”

In deciding which of the Greek residences to highlight in his book, Flores-Vianna kept asking himself, “What would Min have done?” He easily answers the question: “I followed one connecting thread—authenticity.” Min Hogg would have been proud of his work.