Durrell School of Corfu Seminar, Travel Writing and Photography, Martha Klironomos

Professor Martha Klironomos gave a talk at the DSC Seminar yesterday (June 21, 2012) on "Travel Writing, Photography and Practice" which took a close look at some of the photographers whose work was included in the original editions of books on Greece by Patrick Leigh Fermor and Lawrence Durrell.

I was particularly interested in her comments on the photographs of Joan Eyres Monsell (who became the wife of Patrick Leigh Fermor) and on Constantine Manos, some of whose photos were included in Lawrence Durrell's "The Greek Islands". In the case of Monsell, Professor Klironomos suggested that the female photographic perspective acted contrapuntally to the textual narrative of the male author. A real loss that the photographs are not included in modern reprints of the classic Patrick Leigh Fermor books on Mani and Roumeli.

Here is a selection of  photographs from Constantine Manos' Greek portfolio. Martha Klironomos informed us that Constantine Manos, a Greek American from South Carolina, had produced disturbing images of the treatment of black people and sharecroppers in the American South, and that this aesthetic practice, related to solemnity, dignity and ethnicity, also influenced the way he approached his Greek portraits (eg of women in Mani singing laments or mirologia).

A rich area for further research.