Director and exhibition curator Maria Iliou and historian Alexander Kitroeff present to the audience images that were forgotten in dusty archives, as well as a new vantage point from which to view the Expulsion and Exchange of Population (Turkey and Greece 1922-1924) on the occasion of the forthcoming 90-year anniversary of the tragic event.
The historical documentary and the exhibition are of major importance, not only so a Greek audience can witness unknown images from the Persecution and the Exchange of populations, but also because these two collaborators have brought a fresh perspective on the manner in which they narrate history. A point of view that keeps its distance from excessively nationalistic narratives, as well as from more modern attempts to overstress the common experience, setting aside the existing differences, given that before the population exchange, the Greek population experienced a persecution.
Ninety years after the Asia Minor Disaster, and shortly before the anniversary of the population exchange, these two collaborators have sought to honour the people who lost their lives in 1922, and those who were forced to abandon their homes, as well as the science of history itself.
The documentary and the accompanying photographic exhibition are documented by rare photographic and film material, drawn from exhaustive searches of archives in America and Europe.
This is the first time that unknown pictures of the persecution and the population exchange have seen the light; pictures from the Library of Congress, Princeton University, Near East Relief, the Red Cross in Geneva, as well as the American Red Cross, Save the Children Fund, the Albert Kahn Foundation, the University of Minnesota, as well as other foundations in Greece and overseas.
The photographic exhibition, which is to be inaugurated on March 27 in Benaki Museum, will be available to the public until April 29. During the exhibition, visitors will have the opportunity to watch a number of documentaries in the auditorium of the museum.
(Find out more at: www.benaki.gr)
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