Product Description

The Archaeological Society of Athens is celebrating its 180th anniversary in December 2017 with the publication by Kapon Editions of a collection of photographs taken in the 1950s of major Greek Archaeological sites, most of which the Society has had a role in excavating and studying. The photographs were taken by the American photographer Robert McCabe primarily during his first two visits to Greece in 1954 and 1955.

The 248 page book in black and white, printed in tritone, has an introduction by Vasileios Petrakos, the President of the Society, and an autobiographical essay by the photographer. The sites presented include Athens, Delphi, Rhodes, Mycenae, Ancient Thera, Corinth, and Methoni.  

The images are many and varied. They illuminate some of the dramatic changes that have taken place in the past 60 years in Greece: monuments before restoration and devoid of tourists, Athenian streets now only recognizable by old people, villages transformed by changes in society.

Many things that interested McCabe were things that the Greeks took for granted but he was seeing for the first time and wanted to record: the light and shadow revealing the shapes and masses of the ruins, the guard taking refuge from the noon-day sun, the lone figure of a woman on a deserted dirt road under the Acropolis–all take on symbolic meaning. The floor worn by water and millennia of footsteps presents a play of shadows that dance to the whims of the sun. Everything interests him: the peaceful railroad station at Mycenae, the photographer at Delphi, the marble workers with their chisels–all bear witness to a lost world that few remember.  For all that which has faded from memory or never been known by those alive today these images will provide a precious coffer of memories through the poetic eye of the photographer.