Chronography

The Archaeological Society of Athens is celebrating its 180th anniversary in December 2017 with the publication of a collection of photographs taken in the 1950s of major Greek Archaeological sites, most of which the Society has had a role in excavating and studying. The photographs were taken by the American photographer Robert McCabe primarily during his first two visits to Greece in 1954 and 1955. The sites represented include Athens, Delphi, Rhodes, Mycenae, Ancient Thera, Corinth, and Methoni. 

Many things that interested McCabe were things that the Greeks took for granted but he was seeing for the first time and wanted to record: the light and shadow revealing the shapes and masses of the ruins, the guard taking refuge from the noon-day sun, the lone figure of a woman on a deserted dirt road under the Acropolis–all take on symbolic meaning. a floor worn by water and millenniums of footsteps presents a play of shadows that dance to the whims of the sun. Everything interests him: the peaceful railroad station at Mycenae, the photographer at Delphi, the marble workers with their chisels–all bear witness to a lost world that few remember.

Introduction by Vasileios Petrakos, the President of the Archaeological Society of Athens.

196 original b&w photographs, printed in tritone.