Kostas Balafas

In 1920 Greek Photographer, Kostas Balafas was born into a poor dairy farming family in the mountain village of Kipseli in Arta. He started taking photographs when he was a student. Story has it he  sold his watch to supplement his small savings and pay for his first camera. Since film was scarce and expensive at this time, it is reported that Balafas used film that quite literally 'fell from the sky' from an Italian bomber during the German occupation to record the Greek army's advances on the Albanian front. 

 

He took part in the resistance and captured the conflict and it's effect on the people of the isolated villages in Epirus against the occupying fascists. His images have become valuable historical documents recording not only the marches and battles that took place, but also the destruction it had on the  families and communities of the area.

After the war, Balafas continued to record the simple daily life of the Greek people who were trying to live off the land, lakes and sea. He also spent time with some of Greece's most isolated monastic communities on picturesque mountainous peaks where women were not allowed and men felt closer to God. 

 

 

Many of these pictures of ordinary people were to become enduring images of a time long since gone and a dignified working class that had been through many wars and conflict to fight for the land that they were born to. During the 1960s Balafas photographed the changing face of progress, recording the building projects of huge dams and reservoirs which were constructed to quench the thirst of Greece's growing post War population.

In 1991 Balafas edited and published a book of his photographs. All of the material had been hidden under the wooden floor boards of a house in Ioannia for 31 years. He died in October 2011 aged 91. Later in life Balafas made many films and was one of the first cameramen of Greek television during a testing broadcast from Thessaloniki's International Exhibition. His contribution to  photography has made him one of the leading exponents of humanist photography in Greece.