ATHENS.- Following its great success, the exhibition Metamorphoses of Athens, which opened in October 2014 in the annex of the Museum Herakleidon, on the occasion of the 180 years since Athens became the capital of Greece, is being enriched, beginning on April 15, with the addition of 120 new photographs focusing on people. Furthermore, it is being extended through July 19, 2015, with the title Metamorphoses of Athens: People-Memories-Monuments. Photographic Itinerary 1839-1960 and is under the auspices of the Municipality of Athens.

This exhibition is a unique tour of the development of the Greek capital and its people, thanks to rare archival material from private collections and is curated by the art historian Haris Yiakoumis. It includes more than 200 rare original photographs, two watercolors, large prints of panoramic views of Athens, old cameras, and special stereoscopic devices of the time, showing 100 stereoscopic plates in 3D. The exhibition is further enhanced by a selection of contemporary photographs of modern Athenians (“City Glances”) of the journalist and student of Athens, Nikos Vatopoulos.

For the visitors who would like to keep the memory of this itinerary alive, two books are available: Metamorphoses of Athens, Photographic itinerary from the 19th to the 20th century (H. Yiakoumis, Tasos A. Andreou, published by Kallimages, Paris 2014) and Faces of Athens from the 19th to the 20th century, 1855-1960 (V. Mavroeidakou, H. Yiakoumis, published by Kallimages, Paris 2015). Also available are high-quality reprints of selected photographs (printed on an EPSON Stylus Pro 3880), ready for framing.

A note by the art historian and curator of the exhibition, Haris Yiakoumis:

"Whatever we may say, art is not a lie", wrote Gustave Flaubert to his mother, describing his impressions in a letter from Athens on December 26, 1850. Art is not a lie, but history needs the truth of memory in order to be written. When history and art go forward together like sisters, then we attain the divine, the sacred.

The photographic itinerary Metamorphoses of Athens: People-Memories-Monuments covers the period 1839-1960 and begins in the middle of the 19th century, with travel companions the Athenians who pose in the studios of Philippos Margaritis, Dimitrios Konstantinou, Georgios Kolomvos, Xenophon Vathis, Petros Moraitis, Panayiotis Sotiropoulos, the brothers Typhoxiloi, Michail Zapheiropoulos, and G.P. Theodoros. Towards the end of that century, as demand increased, new studios were set up by both Greek and foreign photographers (the Romaidis and the Gaziadi brothers, Dimitrios Martimianakis, Georgios Boukas, Nikolaos Birkas, Dimitrios Spigos, Fokion Papamitros, Ioannis Pagonis, Grigorios Stylianides, Peyros Pavlides, the Kalligeri brothers, J. De Boé Contaldi, Carl Böhringer, Emile Lester et al.). In the 20th century, thanks to the increasing number of amateur photographers, photos captured the human presence with greater vitality, during family gatherings, for example, or outings to the Acropolis, where only foreign visitors had been photographed until then. Photographs taken by journalists, on the other hand, present the majority of the historical events of the first half of the 20th century.

This updated exhibition invites us to embark on a journey in time, with both individual and collective memory as our guide. Known and unknown photographers, both professional and amateur, relate in their own way, not only the history of Athens, but also the political and social changes of two important time periods that influenced the life of its inhabitants.