ABSTRACT
This chapter calls attention to the collection of war photographs of the Balkan Wars period created for the museum of the Battle of Sarandaporo, one of the numerous military museums established during the junta years (1967–74). Its first aim is to present an important stage in the production of military history in Greece, connecting it with the political agenda of the dictatorship, which dictated this process. The second, and perhaps more important, aim is to examine these old war photos in order to raise a wider question regarding how photography came to acquire historical value. Until the junta began to stage historical military exhibitions, old war photographs rarely appeared in the Greek public arena. Thus, their re-appearance as museum exhibits must not be taken for granted. Even though today the importance of photography for the recording of the past in general, and especially for the recording of important historical events, such as wars, is widely acknowledged, we have to wonder whether photography has always been appreciated as the proper medium to immortalise significant events. To answer this question, I seek to detect the social meaning of war photographs in Greece, examining a long period of the twentieth century, from the Balkan Wars (1912–13) up to the junta, in an attempt to substantiate the main thesis of this chapter, namely that the historical value of photography has been acknowledged through a complex cultural process.
