The Mount Athos Center, in collaboration with the Municipality of Eordaia and the Ptolemaida Association of Graduates of 1968, presents the exhibition of photographs by Giorgos Poupis entitled ‘Exaltation. The Cross in the Land of Mount Athos’ in Ptolemaida, the town in which he grew up.

The exhibition forms part of the ‘ELEFTHERIA 2024’ celebrations organised by the Municipality of Eordaia and is being held under the aegis of the Holy Metropolis of Florina, Prespes and Eordaia.     

 

The exhibition will be officially opened at 5 p.m. on Saturday 12 October 2024 in the Cultural Center of Ptolemaida, and will be attended by Archimandrite Vasileios Gontikakis, Abbot of the Holy Monastery of Iveron, who will talk about the late departed photographer Giorgos Poupis and the symbol of the Cross.        



     

In 2017 the Mount Athos Center, in collaboration with Giorgos Poupis, began to prepare the current exhibition along with the associated catalogue. During the preparations, the photographer expressed his desire that his photographic archive on Mount Athos should be placed at the disposal of the Mount Athos Center, a desire that was eventually fulfilled by his sister Panagiota Poupi after his premature death. This archive now belongs to the Mount Athos Center.     

Giorgos Poupis collected the photographic material presented in the exhibition patiently and lovingly in the course of thirty years’ work on Mount Athos. Poupis captured on film numerous outdoor crosses around the Athonite Republic from his own individual perspective and with his own highly personal aesthetic.

• 
• 
• 
•  

• 
• 
•  

The exhibition was first presented in the exhibition space of the Mount Athos Center in 2022, and later travelled to the city of Veliko Tarnovo in Bulgaria (autumn 2023), while during Great Lent earlier this year it was presented  at the Cultural Center of the Holy Metropolis of Grevena.

The Mount Athos Center has published a catalogue containing the material from the exhibition and a text by Archimandrite Vasileios Gontikakis entitled ‘The Cross (and the crosses) on Mount Athos’, as well as a short text by the photographer himself.   

Giorgos Poupis (1950-2018), who came from Grevena, was born in 1950. He spent his childhood and teenage years in Ptolemaida. In 1968 he left for Italy in order to study architecture in Milan. During his studies, he took up photography, learning the art under famous photographers, while in 1975 he settled in Paris, where he took lessons in photography and the visual arts. After a ten-year absence, he returned to Greece and settled in Thessaloniki, where he collaborated with Greek and foreign agencies and historical journals. He worked on Mount Athos for over thirty years, taking part in numerous projects there.


Duration of exhibition: 12 – 22 October 2024            

 
________________________________________________________
Αγιορειτική Εστία,  Μέγαρο Νεδέλκου, Εγνατίας 109 – Θεσσαλονίκη
Τ. 2310263308 | www.agioritikiestia.gr | This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.