Kostas Balafas, Photographer of Epirus

A reminder of Balafas' wonderful black and white photographs of Epirus (248 images)

The book:

"Epirus is Balafas’ photographic portrait of his birthplace, the mountainous region in the North West of Greece, and its people. Taken from 1945 to 1970, the 300 photographs in the collection make up a narrative of local history through the lens of landscape and tradition. At the same time, as Angelos Delivorias points out in his introduction, history is but the reality of life. Each of Balafas’ photographs is a unique testimony to the passage of time in one place, and to the artist’s experience of it. In this respect, the photographer becomes a poet and his work a mythmaking narrative. Kostas Balafas was born in 1920 of peasant parents in a mountain village of Epirus. He took part in the Resistance (1941-44), fighting against the German occupiers, and recording it in an album of photographs entitled "The Rebel Army in Epirus". From 1951 he was an employee at the Greek Public Electricity Company, devoting his spare time to photography. His photographic style and subjects are greatly influenced by the hard conditions of his childhood and the struggles of the Greek people for independence, which he witnessed: Balafas portrays the toil and sufferings of the poor; young workers, old women and small children on their way to earn the day’s bread; and the rough landscape surrounding them."