Vicky Markolefa "Minding The Bump"

Vicky Markolefa is an award-winning visual storyteller and communication expert from Greece. And she is the co-founder of Mind The Bump, the creative collective behind the Yellow Van Stories. But, above all, she is the love of my life.

In this episode we talk about our plans for the year, projects to come, and why we do what we do. It provides you with an opportunity to get to know one of the major driving forces behind this show as she finds guests for the show, provides much needed feedback, and develops our long-term strategies.

I met Vicky while shooting a film along the European Refugee Trail in the make-shift camp in Idomeni on the Greek-North Macedonian border. There she was and I was hers...for good.

Vicky was the communication manager of MSF Greece at the time, facilitating medical help for refugees living amidst a growing humanitarian crisis.

Despite her degrees in Business Administration and Marketing Management, I think it is safe to say, that photography and film are by far her big passions in life. It is here where she feels she can shape the world ever so slightly and follow her idealism.

Vicky's work has to a very large degree been focused on human rights and ecology, holding leading communication positions at ActionAid Greece, WWF, and MSF Greece as well as having an extraordinary photographic and filmic body of work from around the globe featuring the same topics.

What I find most extraordinary and moving in her images is her unparalleled ability to capture the vulnerability of both the photographed as well as the photographer, maintaining eye-level even when she towers over her subject. Her pictures are, in that sense, testaments of her empathy.

For her storytelling work she has been awarded many times - in photography and in film. 

Vicky is an anarchist, believing in the governing power of nature. Maybe the reason she loves animals more than human beings. Or does she? Listen in to find out.

SHOW NOTES

Mind The Bump
Vicky's Website
Vicky on Instagram
Vicky on Facebook
WomenPhotoGR

Masai Mara
"Walden" by Henry David Thoreau
Zenith Camera
"The March Of Hope", documentary film by Jim Kroft and Bastian Fischer
"Steps" Initiative for homeless people in Greece

Get Jim Kroft's beautiful song "Love In The Face Of Fear" 

Yellow Van Stories is a Mind the Bump Production.