Fourteen years after their first presentation at the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, the photographs by Leonidas Papazoglou find a permanent home at the Vergos Mansion in Kastoria.
In response to the request for the permanent exhibition of photographic works by Leonidas Papazoglou, the George Golobias family, proprietor of his photographic archive, granted the Municipality of Kastoria license to use 140 photographs and 400 digital archives for their permanent exhibition and the promotion of his work.
The exhibition, curated by Costis Antoniadis and realised with the support of the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, is inaugurated on November 10 2018 at the Archontiko Vergos, 12, Aedritas Str., in Kastoria. It mostly comprises individual and group portraits of local residents as well as soldiers, while a smaller section of his photographs depicts everyday life scenes, incidents and social events.

The photographic archive of Leonidas Papazoglou undoubtedly constitutes an important testimony to the social and economic life of Kastoria in the early 20th century. Collector and researcher George Golobias, well aware of the value of this archive, recorded and methodically classified its contents. Following his proposal to the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, 115 photographs from the archive were presented there for the first time in autumn 2004. The exhibition was accompanied by the publication of a photographic album titled “Photographic portraits from Kastoria and its vicinity at the time of the Macedonian Struggle”.

Since then, the exhibition as a whole or parts of it has been presented, with the support of the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, in Greece and abroad:
2004, Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, Thessaloniki.
2004, Benaki Museum, Athens.
2005, Florina Museum of Contemporary Art, Florina.
2008, Sofia Ethnographic Museum, Sofia, Bulgaria.
2009, Aiani Archaeological Museum, Ayani, Kozani
2009, Archontiko Vergos, Kastoria
2011, Rizario Exhibition Centre, Monodendri, Ioannina
2013, Drosopigi Cultural Conference Centre

Leonidas Papazoglou

Leonidas Papazoglou was born in Kastoria in 1872. He died in 1918 at the age of 46, a victim of the Spanish influenza epidemic which plagued Macedonia at the time, causing thousands of casualties. He learned the art of photography in Constantinople, along with his brother Pantelis, with whom he had partnered from the beginning of their careers, according to all the evidence. The study of the surviving prints indicates that they were the first Kastoria-born photographers, and when they started their activity in 1898 or 1899, they monopolised photography throughout the region. The two brothers kept the glass negatives of their photographs separately, each at his home. The archive of Leonidas Papazoglou, comprising several thousand glass negative plates, had been kept since his death stacked in cupboards in a room on the middle floor of his home. In the summer of 1993, any glass plates found in good condition, they were put in carton boxes, while the rest were destroyed. Two years later, the surviving part of the archive was sold to George Golobias.

George Golobias

Giorgos Golobias was born in 1961 in Vogatsiko Kastoria and studied medicine in Thessaloniki, where he worked as a doctor. Particularly astute in highlighting the detail and accurate in recording the documentation, he is considered to be one of the most important researchers in the field of historical photography. He passed away prematurely at the age of 48, leaving behind his personal archive of countless relics, postcards, maps and other historical evidence about Kastoria.