Images of Kastoria in the early 20th century
Past images of the northwestern city of Kastoria, as they emerge in the photographs of Leonidas Papazoglou (1872-1917 or 1918), were introduced to the broader Greek public in exhibitions organized by the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography and the Benaki Museum in Athens. The discovery of Papazoglou’s work was made by collector and researcher Giorgos Golobias, who also conducted the research into mapping the artist’s life and talent. The fruits of these labors have now been compiled into an album titled «Leonidas Papazoglou: Photographic Portraits from Kastoria and Its Vicinity from the Time of the Macedonian Struggle – The Golobias Collection,» published by the Thessaloniki Photography Museum. Papazoglou’s elegantly staged portraits reveal the multiethnicity, the mosaic, of society in Western Macedonia at the turn of the 20th century, and also show the skills of a photographer whose work had largely gone unnoticed until recently. The New York-based Omonia Association of Kastorians has dedicated its annual wall calendar to Papazoglou’s photographs and to Golobias for «his ongoing efforts each year to publish a calendar whose theme is old Kastoria and the fond memories of the past.»
