Dr. Robert S. Merrillees, past director of the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute, an authority on the art and archaeology of the Bronze Age Mediterranean and Near East, and a member of the original Phlamoudhi expedition, writes:

“For the Merrillees family, Helen, Antoinette and Dolla, two seasons of excavations at Phlamoudhi in the depth of summer in an isolated corner of Cyprus were an unforgettable experience. It can never be repeated.  ... the traditional way of life of the local inhabitants, and the tranquillity of the island in the early 1970s are gone forever. I have been back but it is not the same place.

What those halcyon days have left us with is a sense of academic achievement, lasting friendships and a nostalgia for times past, captured for posterity in Ian Cohn’s photographic record that evokes dormant but still vivid memories."

Peter Loizos, emeritus professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and an author of two studies on a displaced community in Cyprus, has contributed an afterword to the book in which he writes:

“... I asked my daughter about this, and she is quite clear: ‘If I had to run from the burning house I would take the cat in one hand, and my photo albums in the other.’ ...

This is why the photographs taken by Ian J. Cohn of the Phlamoudhi villagers, in the summer of 1972  will mean so much to the people portrayed in them, because two years later, they, like so many other Greek and Turkish Cypriots, and people elsewhere  found themselves displaced by war, and they have not been able to re-posses their homes.”

ISBN: 978-0-615-28948-9

© 2009 Ian J. Cohn