ANDREAS EMBIRIKOS, 1901-1975

It is well known that the poet and prose writer Andreas Embeirikos was also a keen photographer, but for a long time his photographs remained unseen. There was just one occasion on which Embeirikos presented his photographic work to the public - in 1955, at the Ilissos Gallery at 13 Amerikis St. The exhibition, which included a remarkable 210 photographs, lasted just a few days, from 22 January to 12 February, and was not repeated. Since then, with the sole exception of an article by Dimitris Kalokyris, Andreas Embeirikos, the photographer, in the tenth issue of the magazine Photographos in 1991, the photographic work of this leading Greek surrealist has remained veiled in mystery.

This work is part of the Embeirikos Archive, as recently revealed by Embeirikos' son, Leonidas: "There is also a huge photographic archive, the only one completely arranged and classified by my father himself, which is essentially a sort of poetic and visual diary, one which also shows the artist's early relationship with formalism as well as other artistic currents of the 20th century. A large part of the archive is selected by the artist himself, in the form of enlarged photographs from the studies in the archive - there may well be more than 30,000 negatives in all, taken from 1947-48 onwards".

Apart from the negatives, which still have not been examined in detail, the archive also contains some 1,200 black and white photographs most of which were printed on paper 30x40 and 24x30cm. These enlargements, which include most of the prints made for the 1955 exhibition, represent the final selection made by Embeirikos himself from the whole of his photographic oeuvre. On their rear the enlargements bear a stamp with the words 'COPYRIGHT A. L. EMBIRICOS', while almost all are annotated in the photographer's own hand, with the time and place the photograph was taken, and a code referring to the painstakingly classified negatives. These codes consist of a letter corresponding to the type of camera used and a number referring to the film; the code C.57, for example, refers to the 57th film taken using a Contax camera.

Embeirikos was evidently attracted to the technical aspects of photography, especially the equipment. According to Leonidas Embeirikos, his son, he diligently collected manuals, manufacturer's handbooks and even advertising material concerning the cameras in which he was interested. Unlike many professional photographers he acquired a large collection of cameras and attachments. The pre-war cameras have not survived, but we do know that among them was a Super Ikonta 12x9. In the post-war period he showed a particular preference for the Contax line, owning two Contax 3 and a Contax 2 as well as a Rolleiflex, Leica and Kiev, while at the end of the 1950's he also acquired a telemetric Nikon. Although he was a keen follower of technical developments he was never won over by the single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras, remaining faithful to the rangefinder.

Embeirikos' oeuvre can be divided into three periods. It had formerly been assumed that the work of his first, pre-war period, had been completely lost during the occupation, but fortunately research this year uncovered two series of pre-war photographs which survived the general destruction - one of them among the belongings of the artist's mother, the other - and more interesting - in the archives of the Benaki Museum. Although in relatively poor condition, the negatives found in the archives appear to be clearly influenced by the French surrealist photographers, something which makes them quite unique in the history of Greek photography.

The second period begins in 1951, when Embeirikos was compelled to give up his practice as a psycho-analyst, and ends, in essence, in 1957, with the birth of his son. The overwhelming majority of the prints which have survived date from this period. The subjects of the works are more conventional: landscapes, both Greek and foreign, street subjects, portraits of friends and women, photographs of young girls, mostly taken on the street, and a few nudes.

Finally, in the years following 1957 Embeirikos began to keep a methodical photographic record of the childhood of his son, lasting for the next eighteen years or so. He did, of course, photograph other subjects, but less frequently and without great inspiration. The portraits of Leonidas Embeirikos, hitherto quite unknown and the product of an almost obsessive interest on the part of the photographer, make up the most important part of the photographic oeuvre of Andreas Embeirikos.

 • The new prints were made by Boris Kirpotin.
 • We should like to thank the Benaki Museum, and more particularly the Director of the Historic Archive, Alekos Zannas, for the loan of the photographic material contained in the Matsis Hatzilazarou archive.