Abstract

Published in Greek (2007) and English (2009), this volume combines, for the first time, the visualization of the history of modern Greece with the historicization of the country’s photographic history, from the 1850s to the present. A three-year long research project, this publication was commissioned by Melissa Publishing House, one of the most established Greek art and culture publishers internationally, aiming to make available unpublished photographic material. With the expert advice of the international historian, Spyros Asdrahas (Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne; Institute for Neohellenic Research) and together with the 19th century specialist, Aliki Tsirgialou (Benaki Museum), Moschovi examined hundreds of images in public archives and private collections in Greece and abroad to select the 350 images of the publication. Bulding on 15 years of expertise in the history of Greek photography, Moschovi’s 12,000-word critical analysis focuses on the history of the representation of politics and the politics of representation itself. This approach bears close methodological affinities to the social history of art model, challenging earlier assumptions that were based on an insular reading of photographic history as an evolution of technologies and aesthetics, and proposing new, bold hypotheses around the status of the photographic document, and thus differentiates this project from other similar projects, such as Tate’s How we Are exhibition and Dutch Eyes: A Critical History of Photography in the Netherlands, presented the same year.