The Hellenic Centre and The Museum of Cycladic Art are present in Robert McCabe’s photo exhibition in London.
Pioneering photographer Robert McCabe first visited Greece in 1954 and captured a way of life that that has now all but vanished. Sixty iconic images from his travels around the country will be exhibited at the Hellenic Centre in February 2011, under the aegis of the Centre and The Museum of Cycladic Art. After important exhibitions in the U.S.A and Europe, this will be the first U.K. showing of McCabe’s work.
Greece has changed dramatically since the artist made the pictures some fifty years ago. During what he describes as an “enchanted” time, McCabe recorded the landscape, villages and traditions of a country that was recovering from civil war, and where tourists were few and far between. The islands and villages still maintained their ancient and distinctive traditions in music, architecture, poetry, embroidery, cooking, and ship building.
“There was something exotic about Greece back in those days”, he recalls. “Tourism was a non-existent term and no matter where I went, people were incredibly hospitable. I remember in 1961, when the mayor of Ios offered his own bed to a New York doctor who was in our group. Could you imagine something similar happening today? It was Homeric hospitality.”
Born in Chicago in 1934, McCabe was raised in the New York area, where he still spends six months a year, the remainder of the year being in Greece. His father worked for a photographic publication and gave his five-year-old son his first camera. The photographer shot his first images of Europe during a journey across France, Italy and Greece in 1954. He returned to Greece in 1955, 1957 and 1965, while in 1959 he reached Antarctica.
Visitor information:
The Hellenic Centre
16-18 Paddington Street
London W1U 5AS
020 7487 5060
Opening Hours: 7th-11th Feb 10am-5pm, 12th-16th Feb by appointment only
For further information and images please contact Theresa Simon & Partners at:
pauline@theresasimon.com or theresa@theresasimon.com (020 7734 4800)
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