The Museum of Photography is the only state-run museum in Greece under the supervision of the the Hellenic Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, Culture and Sports dedicated exclusively to photography, celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2008. Its mission on local, national and international level is realised:

• By planning and executing exhibition series, such as “The four elements of nature and man” as well as by hosting and exporting exhibitions around Greece and abroad.
• By creating archives and collections entrusted to the museum by photographers and by proceeding in digitalizing and documenting them in order to preserve, conserve and promote them, as well as by conducting research and salvaging works from external sources.
• By publishing books, catalogues and informational material and by organizing educational programmes to cultivate in a systematic way public knowledge about the photographic medium.
• By organizing the Photobiennale, the evolution of the international photography meeting Photosynkyria and by enriching the platform for dialogue through portfolio reviews, the establishment of prizes and the organization of meetings.
• By developing parallel activities to form a core of cultural movement in cooperation with others and
• By creating a meeting place where art converses with everyday life and the pictures are accompanied by words in the series “Words and Images”.
Through all these activities the Museum attempts to respond not only to its mission but also to its role which is gradually becoming even more complex in this society of “image”, by cultivating the eye of the public, by offering a beginner’s guide to our visual environment and, ultimately, by showing us how to “read” the images so that we familiarise ourselves with all its uses: in communication, in photojournalism, in documentary photography, and, above all, in art.

Collection – Archives – Digitization

The collections and the archives of the Museum of Photography Thessaloniki consist of more than 100.000 photographic objects. Its archives cover the period from 1890-1980 and include works by Socrates Iordanidis, Yiannis Stylianou, Dimitris Letsios and part of the archives of Costas Balafas and Nelly’s, while the museum also functions as a depository for the Greek part of the Fred Boissonnas archive which belongs to the Hellenic Culture Organization. Its collection, based on donations and purchases, cover a period from 1970 till today and include more than 2.000 photographic works by 200 artists from Greece and abroad. The digitization of the Museum’s photographic collection and archives was realized on a systematic basis with the financial aid of the program “Society of Information”, (3rd Community Support Framework 2000-2006). As part of this program, the whole of its permanent collection was digitized as well as part of its archives.