Great Photographers
The photographer of Greece's occupation famine and post-war years
Voula Papaioannou (1898–1990) photographed Athens in war and occupation: the 1940 mobilisation, soldiers wounded on the Albanian front and the victims of the 1941–42 famine. After liberation she headed the UNRRA photographic section and documented the devastated countryside. In 1976 she handed her archive, about 12,500 negatives, to the Benaki Museum.
In their wordsΓενικά, από αγάλματα άρχισα. Και παρέμεινα πάντοτε ερασιτέχνης.
Εγώ έλεγα πάντα ότι η φωτογραφία είναι μόνο η έκφραση... Η έκφραση δείχνει τον άνθρωπο χωρίς φτιασίδι, χωρίς στολίδια.
Τέτοια επιθυμία είχα να δείξω όσα γίνονταν.
Papaioannou is known for her photographs of Athens in 1940–1944: the mobilisation, the wounded in hospitals, the children of the famine and the soup kitchens. Often taken in secret, these images served at the time as evidence for humanitarian aid from abroad, and today they are among the main visual sources for the occupation of Greece. She was more interested in facial expression than in the event itself; she said that photography is "only the expression". She brought the same approach to her post-war work for UNRRA and to the books of the 1950s, photographing the countryside, the islands and their people with spare composition and natural light.
Voula Papaioannou was born in Lamia on 18 September 1898, the daughter of army officer Theocharis Papaioannou. The family settled in Athens in 1908. In 1917 she enrolled at the Athens School of Fine Arts to study painting, but left in 1918. In the mid-1930s she took up photography, guided by the amateur photographer Panos Geralis, with whom she travelled to Santorini and Mykonos in 1935. Her first subjects were ancient sculptures in the National Archaeological Museum and the Acropolis Museum, monuments and landscapes, partly for postcards aimed at foreign visitors.
When the Greek-Italian war broke out in 1940, she photographed the mobilisation in Athens and soldiers wounded on the Albanian front in Hellenic Red Cross hospitals. The album Our Wounded (Οι τραυματίαι μας) brings together 161 of her photographs from that period. Under the German occupation, especially in the winter of 1941–42, she recorded children and adults wasted by hunger, soup kitchens and children's institutions. She often worked in secret, in places where photography was forbidden. The pictures reached other countries through the International and Swiss Red Cross and helped bring food shipments to Greece. Some of them were gathered in the so-called Black Album of the occupation.
After liberation she worked as a photographer for foreign relief missions. From 1946 she headed the photographic section of UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) and toured Western Greece and Epirus; her diary of that tour was published in 2006. She recorded destroyed villages, the living conditions of their inhabitants and the work of reconstruction in the aftermath of the Civil War.
In the 1950s she photographed the Greek landscape, the islands and their people. She worked with the Greek National Tourism Organisation, and her pictures appeared in tourist publications. La Guilde du Livre / Éditions Clairefontaine in Lausanne published two books of her photographs: La Grèce à ciel ouvert (1953), with text by Pierre Jacquet, and Iles grecques (1956), with text by Mimica Cranaki. She was a founding member of the Hellenic Photographic Society.
From the mid-1960s she withdrew from active photography, and her work was largely forgotten for years. In 1976 she handed her archive, about 12,500 negatives, to the newly founded Photographic Archive of the Benaki Museum. Her first solo exhibition, Photographic Reports 1940–1960, opened in 1989; elderly and with serious sight problems, she was unable to attend. She died in Athens in 1990. Later came the exhibition Images of Despair and Hope. Greece 1940–1960 (1995), the monograph published by the Benaki Museum and Agra (2006) and the exhibition Voula Papaioannou Cabinet at La Virreina in Barcelona (2019).
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One of her photographs from the winter of 1941–42, when famine killed thousands of people in occupied Athens. Images like this reached other countries through the International and Swiss Red Cross and helped bring food shipments to Greece.
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A farewell between a soldier and an elderly woman in the days of the mobilisation. The photographer focuses on the parting rather than on official ceremonies.
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Soldiers from the Albanian front being treated for frostbite, one of the most common problems of the 1940–41 winter in the mountains. Papaioannou photographed the wounded in Red Cross hospitals systematically.
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A moment from the return of Greeks from the Sinai desert at the end of the war. The two men's embrace and the black armband one of them wears show the joy of return and mourning together.
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One of her earliest works, from the years when she photographed ancient sculpture, partly for postcards. Raking light brings out the volume of the figure; she herself said she started "with statues".
MoreHer photographic archive, about 12,500 negatives from the mid-1930s to the 1960s, handed over in 1976.
Official sourceAccession no. 392 – Voula Papaioannou Archive: 145 documents and 78 photographs, 1940–1952.
Official sourceSources & links
