Exhibition of historical photographs
27 September 2024 – 31 January 2025
Maliotis Cultural Center
Boston, USA
 
The Mount Athos Center of Thessaloniki, in collaboration with the Department of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University, USA, and the Mount Athos Foundation of America, and with the support of the Maliotis Cultural Center, is to present in Boston, Massachusetts, the exhibition of historical photographs and surviving silent film from the expedition undertaken by three traveller-artists from Princeton to Mount Athos and Meteora in 1929. The Mayor of Thessaloniki and President of the Mount Athos Center’s Board of Directors, Mr. Stelios Angeloudis, stated the following regarding the transfer of the exhibition to Boston: ‘We are particularly pleased that our exhibition with its rare photographic and cinematic material from Mount Athos and Meteora in 1929 will be presented in America. The collaboration between the Mount Athos Center and one of the world’s leading universities in researching and utilising such an important archive from Princeton’s collections illustrates the Center’s great potential and is a culmination of the dynamism it has gained over the last few years. This exhibition forms only a part of the collaboration we have developed in recent years with the Mount Athos Foundation of America, and other notable activities have already been planned to promote the work of the Mount Athos Center in the USA, including the production of publications and exhibitions, as well as the organisation of conferences. We are very pleased, therefore, that through these important activities organised by the Mount Athos Center, the spiritual and cultural heritage of Mount Athos can be promoted beyond the borders of Greece.’

The exhibition was first staged in the exhibition space of the Mount Athos Center in 2023, and that same year it travelled to Kalambaka in northern Greece. At the beginning of 2024, the exhibition was staged again at the Mount Athos Center, following requests by numerous schools for the purposes of school visits.  
              
A few words about the photographic archive and the exhibition:
Towards the end of 2017, during a move of the old libraries of Princeton University’s Department of Art and Archaeology, the staff discovered a hidden barrel containing photographic material relating to an unknown and long-forgotten journey.
The research that was carried out by members of the departmental staff revealed that the nine canisters of film that had been placed inside the barrel contained the record of a journey undertaken by a group of travellers to Mount Athos and the Meteora. Further research succeeded in establishing a connection between the film material and 254 photographic prints and 81 glass lantern slides (16 of which were hand-coloured) that already existed, though unidentified, in the Visual Resources Collection of Princeton University. 
The journey to Greece took place in the autumn of 1929 and the group of travellers comprised the Russian emigré, painter, explorer and gifted communicator Vladimir “Vovo” Perfilieff, the photographer, talented cinematographer and later Oscar prize-winner Floyd Crosby, and the architect and Princeton University graduate Gordon McCormick. The three travellers were accompanied by the young Anastasios Chatzimitsos, an interpreter from Thessaloniki. The expedition’s main destination was Mount Athos, where the aim was to photograph and film a place which was then regarded as being mysterious, unique and unaltered by the passage of time.
The members of the expedition were struck by the superb natural scenery, the architecture of the monasteries, the daily life of the monks, their encounter with the cave-dwelling hermit Elias and the remarkable conditions in which he lived.

The photographs in the collection bring to light rare material and the information they provide in the fields of history, social studies, folklore and architecture is extremely important as it extends the range of original sources and adds invaluable new data to the historical research on two leading monastic centres of the Orthodox world: Mount Athos and the Meteora.

Research & Curation of the exhibition:
Anastasios Ntouros, Director of Mount Athos Center
 
More information
www.mountathosfoundation.org/exhibition/
www.agioritikiestia.gr