Photographe - Costas Balafas

 

Costas Balafas is one of the post-war humanist photographers whose work determined the course of Greek photography. His photographs are a unique testimony of Greek history and society, where the struggles of the ordinary Greeks in their daily life feature predominantly. The residents of the remote villages of Epirus, his birthplace, and especially the women of Epirus, who fight for survival under the harshest conditions, occupy a special place in his work. In the photographs exhibited at the Hellenic Centre of London, Balafas, employing the admiration of a small child and the intuition of an artist, depicts the pulse of Greek life and space, ranging from the salt pits in the Ionian islands to the lignite mines in Aliveri and from the sheepfolds in Epirus to the ironworks in Athens.