Rendering homage to the prominent artist of the Greek Diaspora Constantine Manos, the Benaki Museum presents an exhibition / tribute to his renowned photographic series, A Greek Portfolio. With his exquisite images Manos invites us to travel with him to remote villages and islands of Greece in the 1960’s, where in a landscape of simple farm life and tranquility, poor yet proud people struggle to survive with dignity, dedicated to a way of life that hadn’t changed for centuries.
His photographs crystallize fleeting everyday moments, in a spare and austere style, which is nevertheless tender, without any pompous rhetoric. His award-wining work stands out with the pictures of the country of that time and serves as a springboard for young photographers for a different approach to the Greek countryside.
Beyond the ethnological and historical interest that this project acquired over the years and especially after the catalytic changes brought with the development of tourism the last decades, the poetic ability of Manos’ lens, creates timeless images which exude the uniqueness of the landscape and its inhabitants, offering us “a part of our identity.” Also, as the works of great poets, according to the director of the Benaki Museum Angelos Delivorias, “They refer to the immutable values, those which are detectable even in the most humble phenomena of life and to the epic dimension which is inherent in the relation between human and the environment.”
Marking the 50th anniversary of putting together A Greek Portfolio, Constantine Manos re-examines the shots he took during the period 1961-1964 (to which he added more in 1967), when he traveled the breadth and length of his parents’ country, “as a friendly observer,” he stated, “with no rush or specific plan” and offers a different reading of his material.
The first part of the exhibition presents a group of original prints of his photographs, which he chose himself in 1972 to illustrate the portfolio of the same name.
In the second part the themes were selected from amongst 219 original prints, which the photographer recently donated to the museum’s photographic archive, and did not include in his composition of A Greek Portfolio.
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