Manolis Fotiou

Manolis or Manos arrived in London from Athens at twenty-one speaking almost no English.

A year later he was fluent.

Over the following decade, he became a highly sought-after bespoke project manager, trusted by some exceptionally demanding clients to make complicated things happen beautifully.

He developed a reputation for a particularly Greek form of directness. Titles and status have never impressed him very much. People do.

This has occasionally surprised people with impressive titles.

Eventually, another part of his life began asking for attention.

Manos left the world he knew and studied photography. Behind the camera he discovered or perhaps simply recognised, something that had always been there: an ability to see people beneath the identities they present to the world.

His portraits have the same quality as his friendships. They are intimate, unvarnished and difficult to fake.

Manos has travelled a complicated road himself. He has made choices he is proud of and others he has learned from. With time, that experience has given him something increasingly rare: the capacity to be with another person without needing to fix them.

On Aegina, Manos is part host, part provocateur and part keeper of the table. He will make sure you eat extraordinarily well. He will probably make you laugh. And somewhere between one conversation and the next, he may ask the question you had been carefully avoiding.

His two great intellectual companions are Socrates and Gurdjieff.

His greatest concern is that there may not be enough time. (Although, fortunately, he believes lunch and dinner should take as long as necessary).

Not having enough time is the reason he takes the present rather seriously.