May 2004

With a wealth of more than 100 photographs, the well-known photographer George Poupis presented the procession of the miracle working icon “Panagia Portaitissa” (Mother of God –the Gate Keeper), which takes place every Tuesday after Pascha at the Holy Monastery of Iviron on Mount Athos.

The event gave the photographer the opportunity to photograph, with sensitivity, touching moments of personal humility and piety, the well-known natural beauty of the Holy Mountain and scenes from the procession of the icon.

The unique moments of the Athonite nature, which with their reverent way participate in the joyful day of the procession, receive the icon’s procession, the humility of the faithful, which is expressed in the faces and the body gestures which stand in veneration and supplicate for the grace of the depicted ‘Mother of God’, the sanctified faces of every monk, which with open hands receive her blessing, are some of the images which a visitor to the exhibit comes across.

 

The exhibit was presented on the grounds of the Mount Athos Center in Thessaloniki. (Egnatia 109, Nedelkos Mansion) in May of 2004.

In August of 2004 the exhibit was moved from Thessaloniki to Imvros and was opened by His All Holiness The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, representation from the Holy Monastery of Iviron, which had as its head the abbot Elder Vasilios, the City of Thessaloniki, the Mount Athos Center.

In 2004 the exhibit was moved from Thessaloniki to New Tenedos and in October of 2006 the exhibit was moved to Xanthi, and took place in the Cultural Museum of this city, within the framework of exhibits of the ancient city of Xanthi.