Photographs by Robert McCabe at the Consulate General of Greece in Boston
Photographs by Robert McCabe at the Consulate General of Greece in Boston
Stratos Efthymiou Consul General of Greece in Boston
Robert McCabe’s photographs have immortalized, in a unique way, a part of the spirit, geometry, light, and identity of a Greece that is receding into history. His photographs are not only a visual poetry of aesthetic perfection, but a treasure of Greek cultural heritage. This permanent exhibition at the Consulate General of Greece in Boston will be an enduring bridge between Boston the “Athens of America” and Greece, captured through the eyes of a philhellene American photographer. For more than 60 years, Robert McCabe has used his lens to preserve the Hellenic cultural landscape and to promote classical studies. To Robert, Dina, Jackie and George McCabe, whose vision and generosity have made this exhibition possible, I express my deep gratitude.
John Camp Director of the Agora Excavations of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens
It is an honor and a distinct pleasure to reflect on the inauguration of this display of photographs of Greece by Robert McCabe, a dear and valued friend. In addition to a long and distinguished career in finance and administration, photography has been his lifelong vocation, the fruits of which we can enjoy today. What Robert McCabe has seen and recorded for us is the infinite variety of life that Greece has always offered. His photos cover a wide array of subjects: landscapes and seascapes, grandiose ruins and modest village houses, agriculture and industry, people at work and people at play, the old and the new. Daily life is depicted in all its variety: agricultural (olives, onions, and tomato crops), sea-faring and boats, and basic smallscale industry (a old bus lovingly maintained beyond any reasonable life-span). No one story is being told, but a kaleidoscope of images of the people, land, and history of Greece has been presented. Scenes that invite the viewer to linger, to consider the activity, the participant, and the location of the view. This is not a collection to be rushed through, but rather one to be
absorbed slowly, with time for contemplation. We are invited by it to consider our own associations and memories. On display are all the different facets which have drawn foreigners to Greece over the centuries. Throughout the years, Philhellenism has been a deep well and has found expression in a broad variety of ways: military, cultural, political, and educational. Robert McCabe’s photographs, with their accurate portrayal of so many aspects of Greek life, are the contribution of a true Philhellene. Taken as a whole despite its great variety his work may be said to have an underlying theme, intentional or otherwise: the passage of time. These pictures record the geologic time of dormant volcanoes, and the ruins of palaces, temples, and tombs of an ancient land; the bewildering technological changes of the past half-century, and the equally fast changes in an essentially conservative society; the character etched by time and weather into individual faces, and the bright smile on a fresh, young face. Inevitably, these images carry both the pleasure and sadness at memories of time gone by. They are intensely documentary
pictures, serving as the record of a life in Greece which has all but vanished in what seems like the blink of an eye. They depict a society maintained by custom and tradition. A cigarette, unremarkable and even expected today, without a momens hesitation marks the girl holding it as a foreigner, not a Greek. Simpler times, almost certainly; better times, maybe not, but a time very different from today, though many of us can still remember it, along with Robert McCabe. These images are a powerful testimony that our unease that something has changed dramatically is, in fact, the case. Not much depicted here has escaped some transformation: the customs and culture have the landscape has been violated, the technology has moved on. Unchanged perhaps, is the basic challenging environment and the spirit of the people who call this land home. Greece has usually offered a hard livelihood. As Herodotos (9. 122) put it in the 5th century BC: “Soft lands breed soft men; wondrous fruits of the earth and valiant warriors do not grow from the same soil�. A lifetime of hard work is evident in the faces of the adults pictured here, but it is tempered by a spirit determined to confront life and survive its challenges. How appropriate that a group of these works will remain on display here in the city of Boston, only a few steps from the house
of Samuel Gridley Howe, the early Philhellene, while Theodore Saloutos’ great account of the Greeks in the United States was published here by Harvard University Press in 1965.Those who appreciate photography as an art form will find much to admire here in the choice of topic, the framing of the scenes, and the play of light and shadow. Even in black and white, the extraordinary quality of the light in Greece is evident in the reflection of the sun off the Aegean or in the silhouette of Mystra. The same variety which makes it a challenge to limit or categorize this collection thematically is apparent in its varied photographic genres as well: on offer are masterpieces of portraiture, landscape, and social commentary. As noted, the documentary value of these pictures cannot be ignored. With the advent of digital imagery, photography is advancing into uncharted waters. It is remarkably easy to change almost any aspect of an image nowadays, to adjust the color or light, to change the composition, and even to remove or add features. Such photographs; can no longer be fully trusted as accurate records of what they depict. This collection reflects real artistry by the photographer and shows a true Greece, as it once was.
December 26, 2016. The Acropolis at sunset.
Greece Through the Lens of Robert McCabe 1954 - 1965
Delphi. The photographer.
Rhodes. Kamiros. The Doric temple.
Cape Sounion. The temple of Poseidon.
The restoration of the Odeon of Herodes Atticus.Â
The Acropolis guards and the Caryatids of the Erechtheion at sunset.
Meteora. Charles McCabe.
Mycenae. Alan Wace at the Lion Gate.
Athens. The Propylaea of the Acropolis.
Athens. Monastiraki Square.
The Erechtheion at dusk.
The Acropolis from the ancient Agora.
Santorini. Perissa from Ancient Thera.
A fallen column of the Temple of Zeus.
The Parthenon.
A column base from the portico of the Erechtheion.
Workmen on the Acropolis drawing water from a cistern.
The Acropolis from Philoppapos Hill.
Rhodes. Aphrodite Aidoumeni, found in the sea in 1929.
Athens. Two column drums of the Temple of Zeus.
Cape Sounion. Late afternoon.
Pylos. The great archaeological artist Piet de Jong.
Robert McCabe was born in Chicago in 1934 and grew up in the New York City area. His father worked for a picture newspaper in New York, and as the result of the gift of a Kodak Baby Brownie McCabe started taking photographs when he was five. His earliest quest was for newsworthy photographs and he gathered images of hurricanes, drownings, and auto and train accidents. His interests shifted to people, still life, and landscapes during three years in western Massachusetts where little of dramatic interest occurred. His first photographs of Europe were the result of a trip in 1954 to France, Italy, and Greece while he was an undergraduate at Princeton. He returned to Greece in 1955 and 1957 via freighter from the U.S. and traveled extensively in the Aegean, shooting with a Rolleiflex and Plus-X film. In 1957 he took a series of color photographs in the Greek Islands at the request of the National Geographic Society. His black and white photos were first exhibited in 1954 and 1955 at Firestone Library at Princeton, and in a traveling exhibition, which ensued. During this period he also appeared
on television with Ambassador George Melas giving a photographic tour of Greece. In 1967 a selection of photographs was exhibited at the Olympic Gallery (now Olympic Tower) in New York under the auspices of Spyros Skouras. The publication of his first book Metamorphosis was in 1979. In recent years his images have been displayed at the Art Association in Jackson Hole, Wyoming; the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute in New York; The Hellenic Centre in London; the Embassy of Greece in Brussels, Belgium; and at multiple locations in Greece including exhibitions in Athens, Salonica, Patras, Santorini, Monodendri, Poros, Corfu, Patmos, and Anatolia College. In 2008, in the framework of Mois de la Photo, he exhibited a selection of photographs of Greece at Galerie Sit Down in Paris. McCabe’s photographs are represented by galleries in the U.S., France, and Greece. He lives and works in the United States, Greece and France.
Books by Robert McCabe
Grèce: les années d’innocence (2008)
Chronography. (2018). With Dr. Vasileios Petrakos.
On the Road with a Rollei in the ‘50s (2007)
Mycenae: From Myth to History, with Athina Cacouri, John Guare, Lisa French (2016) Wooden Boats of the Aegean, 1954-64 (2016) Citronne Mycenae 1954: High Noon, with Athina Cacouri, John Guare, Lisa French (2014) Patmos: Pathways of Memory (2013) China-Greece: Ancient Peoples, Changing Worlds (2012) The Ramble in Central Park: A Wilderness West of Fifth (2011) DeepFreeze! A Photographer’s Antarctic Odyssey in the Year 1959 (2010)
Weekend in Havana: An American Photographer in the Forbidden City (2006) Greece: Images of an Enchanted Land 1954-1965 (2004) Metamorphosis, or Why I love Greece. (1979) Two new books, Mykonos, and The Last Monk of Stamfani, will be published in September (2018) For more information visit www.mccabephotos.com
This exhibition of photographs of Greece by Robert A. McCabe was inaugurated May 18, 2018 under the auspices of Stratos Efthymiou, Consul General of Greece. With one exception the photographs were taken in the 1950s or early 1960s with a Rolleiflex with a 75 mm lens and Kodak Plus-X film. The prints were made in Athens by George and Sophie Marinos of Idolo Labs and by Andreas Sokulski of Striligas Printing Lab. The frames were made in Athens by Kosta Karasaviddis. Copyright © 2018 Photographs © by Robert A. McCabe Texts by © John Camp and Stratos Efthymiou Designed by Lydia Ioannidou Printed by Cambridge Reprographics
Robert McCabe aboard “Eleftheria”, 1963