Photographs of Thessaloniki in the 20th century.
Curator: Stergios Karavatos
The turning of a century is by itself a memorable event. However, the choice of presenting a century of photographing the city of Thessaloniki does not constitute a delayed anniversary celebration. Using the boundaries of a hundred years, this presentation aims at narrating a course of evolution of the city as well as photography; a course that starts from an era of intense changes for both the city and the art of photography and reaches a present of necessary reassessments. Such an enterprise cannot but mix the historical with the viable and wonder about the future.
For Thessaloniki the temporal limit of the year 1900 marks the commencement of a period of radical changes that will agitate a historical continuity of centuries. Overall, the experience of the adventurous 20th century built a historic relief of rare variety. On the other hand, the milestone of the year 2000 has already become a near past. It seems that a novel continuum is being created in the life of the city, in the few years of experience in the 21st century.
For the art of photography, the beginning of the 20th century, with its technical advances, as well as the wide applications the medium finds, brings its establishment as the most popular medium of representation. However, the arrival of the 21st century finds us already entrapped in the iconographic noise of optical over-information.
The selection of the ensuing photographs does not have the ambition of being an exhaustive record of the totality of the city’s photographical representations. Nor does it intend to narrate every big or important event by procuring the corresponding photographic document. With the following arrangement of images the attempt is to show certain important times of the history of the city which, affecting the urban and social scenery of Thessaloniki, changed the attitude of certain photographers towards it. Similarly, an effort is being made to present specific advances in the history of photography which led to diversifications of its applications and aesthetics, thus contributing to the constant reshaping of the historic image of the city.
Stergios Karavatos
The photographs of the exhibition appear courtesy of the following photographers, collectors and Institutions or Museums.
Museums - Institutions
The Hellenic Cultural Organization S. A., Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, Photographic Archive of Benaki Museum, Benaki Museum Modern Greek Architecture Archives (Use on loan by E.L.I.A.), Musée Albert-Kahn (Departement des Hauts-de-Seine), Jewish Museum of Greece, Museum for the Macedonian Struggle.
Private collections: Yiannis Megas, Aggelos Papaioannou, Aris Papatzikas.
Photographers:
Alexandros Avramidis, Aris Georgiou, Stratos Kalafatis, Dimitris Karademos, Yiannis Kiriakides, Eleni Maligoura, Paris Petridis, Evdoxia Radi, Yiorgos Tsaoussakis, Stergios Tsioumas, Nikos Fazos, Ingo Duennebier.
