Korateo?

What is it? What does it mean? Simply put, it is just a name. Korateo is an archaic name for the island of Great Exuma in the Bahamas. It is also where I call home.

Korateo is actually the toponym for Exuma, a name given to the island over nine hundred years ago, after the Lucayan Indians first settled these islands. These original settlers, perhaps used the names above when describing their surrounding world of crystal waters, filled with countless islands and cays. Many of these names describe the geographical features of the island. Many or most of the names, like the ones above, were commonly used on early European navigational charts, which have long been outdated.

Today, except for Bimini, all of these names are forgotten. Yet they remind us of a time, before mankind populated our earth, when the natural world was untouched. Though that natural world is diminishing, its’ “name” still remains, “Korateo”, a name that alludes to a time, when once these pristine islands were undisturbed. This notion and appreciation is what I hope comes shining through in my photography. Having been raised in such exceptional beauty, Korateo, to me, is not just a name, it is an awareness or a conception, of what these beautiful islands, and our world, once were, or should be.