A look at the past, through a collection of haunting present-day photographs of the sites of exile for political prisoners during the 20th century in Greece, have been captured by the camera lenses of photo-journalists Orestis Panagiotou and Leonidas Dimakopoulos in a book titled "Places of Exile - A Glance Today" that has just been released. The photo essay, published by Alexandria publications, is a poignant journey in tribute to the tribulations suffered by political exiles in the wastelands of humanity in the troubled years of the 1950s, after the civil war in Greece, and in the late 1960s and early 1970s during the military junta.
Panagiotou and Dimakopoulos spent five years photographing these barren Places of Exile where political prisoners were exiled, tortured and executed, such as Gyaros, Makronissos, the prisons of Egina, Corfu, Leros, Ai Stratis and Ikaria islands.
The sojourn was a singular pilgrimage "to a different Aegean, there where our fathers and forefathers lived the best and the most tortured years of their lives, places haunted by their cries, their agony, their dreams, nostalgia, and those who were left behind", as the photo-journalists say in their prologue.
The 139-page book contains 90 haunting photographs, accompanied by explanatory texts.
Professor of Architecture Stavros Stavridis writes: "In this silent theater, on this suspended stage where nothing takes place, the drama is played of exile and imprisonment as that which they actually are. A devastation, a suspension of time, a condition of banishment and exilement which, for many, became an entire life. Before the past is lost, we must ponder on it. These photographs invite us to look, and to think. Not because we need to finally be done with it. But because knowledge and cognition are needed to provide us with a thinking that delves deeper and deeper to there where real people lived real lives".
The book was presented Monday evening at the Museum of Democratic Resistance against the Dictatorship in Athens, formerly the EAT-ESA museum, in the building that once housed the Greek Military Police's (ESA) Special Interrogation Unit (EAT).
18.03.2010
