Images of Greece and intellectuals
As photography is increasingly shown in contemporary art galleries and is occupying a major position both in the art market and in museum collections, the number of publications on the work of photographers is also growing. «The Islands,» an album on the work of the eminent Greek photographer Costas Balafas, and «The Duration of a Moment,» which includes portraits taken by the French photographer Jean-Francois Bonhomme, are two examples of this tendency. They are both published by Potamos. Available in Greek and designed in large format, the album on the work of Balafas is the third published by Potamos, this latest book being a joint venture with the Benaki Museum. The black-and-white pictures that the photographer took of the Greek islands from the 1950s through the ’70s reveal a less-known interest in the subjects that appear in the work of Balafas, who is mostly known for his images of Epirus and mainland Greece. The introduction to the book, which was written by Balafas himself, shows the artist’s interest in and knowledge of the islands of Greece and their traditions and singularities. The photographer writes, for example, about the vestiges of the Greek revolution that strongly color the atmosphere of the Argo-Saronic islands. He talks about the distinctive traits of the Cretan people, the medieval atmosphere of Rhodes’s old town, the antiquities on Kos and the minimalist architecture of the whitewashed, low-level houses on the islands of the Aegean. The churches and religious celebrations are perhaps one of the strongest features that tie all those islands together as a part of Greek culture. Tinged with a literary flair, Balafas’s text paints a general, objective, yet subtly emotional picture of the island region of Greece. It pays attention not just to the landscape but perhaps more to the people that inhabit the islands and their daily lives. It is also the people that mainly feature in his images, locals photographed while at work out in the fields, fishing, knitting, collecting salt, but also gathered in traditional fiestas and social events of the island community. Together with Voula Papaioannou, Spyros Meletzis and Takis Tloupas, all rough contemporaries, Balafas is one of the classic names of Greek, human-interest photography that emerged in the interwar period. His work is really a tribute to the people of Greece, an ode to their dignity and hard work, especially that of the country’s rural population. Whether taken in Epirus or on the islands, Balafas’s photographs capture a timeless feeling even while showing images of a Greece that belong to the past; a Greece untouched by urbanization and the development of the tourist industry. In his black-and-white photos Balafas describes this world with a realistic, objective, yet poetic way marked by clear, unexaggerated images and with a highly sensitive handling of light. If Greece and the anonymous rural worker unravel before one’s eyes in Balafas’s album, a European, mostly Parisian-related world of intellectuals is what comes through the album of photographer Jean-Francois Bonhomme. The images that follow the book’s three short texts written in Greek and French (by journalist and author Nikos Bakounakis, art critic and writer Dora Vallier and Jean-Francois Bonhomme himself) are portraits of artists and intellectuals, most of them people whom the photographer came to know and whose work he was familiar with. Among them there are several Greeks. They are artists Nikos Hadzikyriakos-Ghika, Yiannis Moralis, and Panayiotis Tetsis; authors Epameinondas Gonatas, Alki Zei, Giorgos Cheimonas and Vassilis Alexakis; musician Giorgos Demertzis; Manolis Kaliyiannis, who was director at the Teriade museum in Mytilene; director of the Benaki museum Angelos Delivorias; and photographer Costas Balafas. Short biographies of all the sitters at the end of the book help the reader make connections. Knowledge of the work of each helps the reader better appreciate the photographs, although the images can also be enjoyed as mere portraits, as images that capture the moment but also contain a wealth of insight into the sitter’s life and temperament. Seen together as a compilation, those images also put across an entire world, a world of intellect and artistic creativity.
