Introduction

A country founded in 1830, modern Greece grew hand in hand with photographic modernity. Following the War of Independence, stability in the albeit limited geographical area that was modern Greece enabled and facilitated visits to the new state, and inevitably made it the object of photographic depictions. Relative stability, civic order, and intensified contacts with the West also fostered the conditions for Greeks to turn towards the new medium. Thus, a discussion of Greece and photography seems essentially to bifurcate into two distinct topics: photography in and of Greece, and Greek photography. ¹ Photography in and of Greece emphasises the photographic object – Greece as a material reality and as virtual locus, constructed through the lens. Greek photography, on the other hand, focuses on the subjects who take the photographs, the auteurs of photographic discourses, grouped together by nationality, a grouping which – as in notions of ‘Greek’ literature, painting and architecture – presents its own challenges. While the two topics can be separated in theory, they are practically very closely interconnected.